As the bus carrying the trainees slowly drove towards the filming base, a certain little girl whose movements were being secretly monitored by the system was sitting on the bed in her hotel room, holding her phone with both hands and typing away furiously, fighting three hundred rounds with black fans with a serious expression on her face.
Just as she was getting increasingly angry at the black fans’ unreasonable arguments, a call notification suddenly cut in. The contact name displayed on the screen clearly showed the two words “Big Brother”.
Qi Yue: “…”
She suddenly calmed down. What the hell? Why was her brother calling her at this time? If she remembered correctly, her brother should be in the evening study hall right now!
Qi Yue refused to admit that she was scared. She silently stared at her phone, waiting for the ringing to end, pretending she hadn’t received it.
Not receiving it would be normal. Her brother should think that she was also at school in evening study hall and didn’t have her phone on her.
Qi Yue was attending a vocational high school. It wasn’t actually hard to ask for a day or two off, but she was afraid her family would find out. Her parents didn’t care about this kind of thing. The main problem was her brother, Qi Yu. Ordinary excuses wouldn’t fool him.
Moreover, Qi Yu and Qi Yue were different. He was studying at a key high school. He was in his third year this year and had a lot of academic pressure. Qi Yue didn’t want him to waste his time on her matters.
Only one call came through, but before Qi Yue could breathe a sigh of relief, a few new messages suddenly popped up in the notification bar.
[Big Brother]: Did you go to Yanhai?
[Big Brother]: [Link: Topic: Who happened to meet Quentin and also got an autograph + photo…]
Qi Yue: “…”
A horror story! This was absolutely a horror story!
She was so scared she almost threw her phone away.
She had skipped class to chase a star and been discovered by her own brother. What should she do?
No, no, no, think on the bright side. Qi Yu, this third-year high school student, might not necessarily know who Quentin was. What third-year high school student would have the time to follow variety shows… That’s not right. If he didn’t know him, how did Qi Yu know she was in Yanhai?
Or to put it this way, even if he didn’t know him, wouldn’t he just look it up online? Even if he didn’t look it up, he could still figure out what had happened just by reading the content of this post.
The problem was… the photo she had posted was retouched. It had thick beauty filters applied. Yet her brother could still recognize her?
The only option now was to deny that it was her. Anyway, no one knew her forum account. Couldn’t there be someone else on the internet who just happened to look similar?
[yue]: What Yanhai, are you okay?
[yue]: Why are you sending me this post? You chase stars too?
[Big Brother]: Why didn’t you answer the phone just now?
[yue]: It wasn’t convenient. I didn’t want to answer.
Seeing that her brother didn’t reply to her messages again, Qi Yue felt a bit complicated. She didn’t know if she wanted Qi Yu to delve into the matter, but she knew that Qi Yu actually didn’t like to interfere in her affairs. The relationship between the two of them was not close.
She didn’t know what Qi Yu’s hobbies were, and Qi Yu didn’t know what she usually did.
At this point, Qi Yue no longer had the energy to continue exchanging curses with that idiot black fan. She casually blacklisted the other side to cease fire, then started replaying the mashup videos in her favorites collection again.
But this time, she wasn’t watching with as much interest as before. She thought to herself, Qi Yu has been getting busier and busier lately. They haven’t seen each other in two months. With how busy his third year of high school is, he actually started a relationship.
But was Qi Yu that obsessed with buying skirts for his girlfriend?
When Qi Yue was on break at home, she had helped Qi Yu receive a few packages, and accidentally glanced at the delivery slips. Long skirts, pleated skirts, shirt dresses, and gaudy hair clips. Ew, her big brother was really cheesy when in love.
She shook her head, didn’t bother thinking about it anymore, propped up her head, and continued watching the video.
Meanwhile, the bus arrived at the station, and the trainees yawned as they slowly got off the bus.
After repeatedly studying the few fragments in the plot related to the girl’s family situation, Quentin’s inner doubts grew stronger and stronger.
The good news was that within the plot he had unlocked, there was a person suspected to be the girl’s older brother who appeared in her parents’ memories.
The bad news was that this older brother was just a background figure in the parents’ memories. His face was very blurry, and his name was unknown. Even the girl’s name appeared only as a pseudonym like “Xiao Yue” within the plot.
Besides this, what puzzled Quentin even more was that he actually found this blurry-faced “older brother” a bit familiar…
Ever since he came to this world, the people he knew were basically concentrated among the trainees and staff on the program “NS”. Could this older brother be hidden among these two groups?
Quentin silently rejected this guess. For one thing, after screening in his mind, he couldn’t find anyone who corresponded to Xiao Yue’s older brother.
For another, if that were the case, why would Xiao Yue be scammed out of her money through public performance tickets? If her brother was an internal member, he should have some means to bring his little sister in.
So why did he think the blurry figure of Xiao Yue’s brother in the fragments looked familiar? Could it be that this person also chased stars like his little sister and was also a fan who had come to the “NS” public performance venue?
How could it be such a coincidence?
Quentin paused in his motion of getting off the bus and thought to himself, ‘It doesn’t seem impossible…’
There were quite a few fans who had impressed him during these three public performances. Since it was a male, that would immediately eliminate the majority, it was a matter of comparing the remaining ones one by one…
“Pa!”
Someone behind him raised a hand and slapped his shoulder. The accompanying voice rang out: “Quentin, you’re like a sleepy ghost, what are you standing there dazed for?”
“…”
Quentin snapped out of his daze, lifted his leg, and continued walking down.
The bus was parked by the roadside, and a group of figures were standing by the street lamp, waving at them.
Cui Yan stood at the very front, his long legs quickly carrying him to the front of the group. He turned his head and called out: “Xiao Qiao, Xiao Ting, walk faster, come over here, let’s go back together!”
His voice was loud and deep, and this one sentence was heard by everyone around them.
The crowd’s expressions changed again and again, and they turned their heads with strange looks to look at Quentin and Yan Qiao standing by the bus door. Even the program’s staff couldn’t help but glance at them a couple of times.
Xiao Qiao? Xiao Ting? What kind of address was this? Anyone who didn’t know would think he was calling out to a girl.
Yan Qiao: “…”
Quentin: “…”
The two of them kept their heads down and silently walked through the crowd. Only after getting closer did Yan Qiao look at Cui Yan with a speechless expression: “Who taught you to call people that? I’ve lived for 19 years, and this is the first time someone has called me Xiao Qiao… Even my mom doesn’t call me that.”
Cui Yan touched the back of his head: “Xiao Qiao sounds better than Xiao Yan. After hearing Xiao Yan so much, it feels like calling you ‘Little Swallow’.”
Yan Qiao was puzzled: “I didn’t hear you change your address before. Isn’t it fine to just call me by my name? Or you can call me Brother Qiao, I wouldn’t mind that.”
“How is that fine? I’m older than all of you!” Cui Yan looked at the other few people under the street lamp and said seriously: “If anyone’s going to call anyone brother, it’s you calling me brother. Everyone else calls me Brother Cui. Only you guys call me Cui directly. Especially you, Xiao Xue, did you hear that?”
Xue Mingzhu looked back at him with narrowed eyes and bared his teeth: “I can never call anyone brother. What are you going to use in exchange? My ‘brother’ is very expensive. Be careful, or I’ll scam you until your family goes bankrupt.”
The droopy corners of Cui Yan’s eyes made him look very innocent, but the bright smile on his face betrayed his good mood.
He took a step towards Xue Mingzhu. In terms of height and build, he completely dominated him. He mimicked Xue Mingzhu’s ferocious expression and said in a deep voice, “Call me brother.”
The corner of Xue Mingzhu’s mouth twitched, not feeling threatened at all: “Qi Yang is older than you. Do you call him Brother Qi Yang?”
Qi Yang silently looked over. Cui Yan raised his eyebrows and answered readily: “What’s the big deal? Ah Yang sounds more intimate anyway. Haven’t you heard Qiao Xue and the others call Ah Yang that? It doesn’t matter if I call him Brother Yang either. Fine, I called him. Now it’s your turn.”
Xue Mingzhu pretended not to hear: “Quentin is younger than me. First, convince Quentin. I’ll listen to him.”
Cui Yan stared at him, then suddenly raised his hand, pressed down on Xue Mingzhu’s head, and rubbed it hard. He muttered in a low voice: “No manners. Quentin is our team leader, don’t you know that?”
Xue Mingzhu’s head was pressed down so his hair covered his eyes: “&%*#@ — You just called him Xiao Ting earlier!”
Cui Yan laughed happily, pretending not to hear clearly.
Quentin stood to the side, listening to them argue, not actively joining in.
This was also the first time he had heard someone call him… Xiao Ting. It was too strange.
Quentin knew that in the social interaction process between people, changing how you address someone was a way to express closeness. In foreign countries, English names might be varied into shorter or cuter nicknames. In China, there were more different types.
Brother X, Sister X, Teacher X were all common forms of address, either to express closeness or show respect. Among peers, calling them by their name was more common. For three-character names, most people would use the last two characters to address them. For example, many trainees called Wen Xinyi “Xinyi”.
And for two-character names, like Quentin, Yan Qiao, Fang Xu, etc., most trainees addressed them directly by their full names.
Of course, this was related to their personalities….they were all the type of people that looked aloof. Casual forms of address always made people worry about whether they might offend them.
Cui Yan’s insistence on calling Fang Xu “Xiao Fang” despite Fang Xu’s protests was because the two of them had known each other long enough and their relationship was already very familiar.
Later, when Wen Xinyi and others also started calling him Xiao Fang, it was because they gradually discovered that Fang Xu’s actual personality wasn’t as gloomy and withdrawn as his appearance suggested.
Besides, wasn’t it quite interesting that a tall, thin, gloomy-looking young man was called “Xiao Fang” by all his friends?
It was like how Cui Yan had now changed his address, bravely calling out “Xiao Ting” to Quentin as a representative.
Wen Xinyi quietly observed Quentin’s expression and found that Quentin didn’t seem to mind being addressed like that.
To be honest, he and Quentin were in the same class and the same dorm. For this public performance, they were also in the same team. He considered himself already quite familiar with Quentin and had long since regarded Quentin as a very good friend.
But he had discovered that Quentin’s sense of distance when interacting with people was sometimes far, and sometimes near…very complicated.
Quentin could let Fang Xu massage him when they weren’t even familiar yet, never refused the approach of Xue Mingzhu and others, and didn’t avoid people when changing clothes in the dormitory. He seemed like a person with a zero sense of distance.
Yet Wen Xinyi just felt that there was a layer of something separating Quentin from them.
Obviously, Quentin was younger than all of them, but he seemed completely unfazed by anything no matter what happened. Regardless of what others did, he would never have a big reaction. It was as if he always had a strange kind of tolerance towards their group of trainees.
What was there to be tolerant about? They were friends. Friends could get along casually and relaxedly. Why did Quentin always give people a distant, elusive feeling, as if he would disappear without a trace if you didn’t pay attention?
Wen Xinyi’s past rule of survival was to endure if he could. So his teacher had always thought his temper was too good and too soft. Shen Yuchuan had put it even more directly, straightforwardly saying that he was simply weak and easy to bully. If it weren’t for his teacher, anyone could trample all over him.
Was Quentin’s tolerance the same as his endurance?
Wen Xinyi suppressed the doubt in his heart. Instead, he glanced at the camera that was still operating not far away and thought to himself: ‘I wonder if that shout from Cui Yan will be broadcasted. If it does get broadcasted…’
Xue Mingzhu beside him said loudly: “Let’s go, let’s go. Is everyone here? Let’s get back to the dorm early. I’m so tired I could fall asleep on any random floor.”
Today was the day of the public performance. The lights in the buildings of the filming base had already been turned off, and only the dormitory building still had a few lights on.
Their group walked on the small path back to the dormitory, with the other trainees ahead and behind them all at a certain distance from them.
Forty trainees. That was less than the number of people in one high school class. By the next elimination, only about twenty would be left. No one knew when the last round of eliminations before the finals would be recorded, nor what changes had occurred on the official website’s vote rankings.
Cui Yan looked at the flickering shadows of the trainees’ backs under the streetlights ahead: “Last year’s finals were live. Ours should be the same. I wonder if the finals will have group divisions.”
Fang Xu said: “How would you group twenty people? PK in the finals wouldn’t mean much either.”
Xue Mingzhu retorted: “So we all have solo stages for the finals? Twenty people would mean twenty solo performances. That’s too many.”
Wen Xinyi had watched last year’s girl group survival show and explained: “Last year, there were twenty solo performances. But they arranged the solo segments of the 20 people together, like one complete stage. Each person only had a minute and a half to perform.”
“I watched some clips of last year’s final live broadcast. The production team invited a lot of very skilled singer-teachers to perform at that time.” Cui Yan looked towards Yan Qiao and smiled. “I remember they also invited the girl group senior sisters from your company, Xiao Qiao. Will they invite the senior brothers from the boy groups this year?”
Yan Qiao choked a bit at the natural use of “Xiao Qiao”. Before he could answer, he heard Fang Xu give a low snort: “Who are you calling senior brother and senior sister? Are you a member of BKL?”
Cui Yan patted Fang Xu’s head: “Xiao Fang, that’s just politeness.”
Fang Xu, who was unable to dodge Cui Yan’s attack, kept a straight face: “…”
‘Damn it. Can’t this guy have some sense of boundaries? He always relied on his height to ambush people. Is there anyone who can control him!’
“I hadn’t heard anything before I came. I don’t know if the director will invite them.”
Yan Qiao thought for a moment, then added: “The possibility is still quite high. But they probably won’t invite boy groups with debut times close to ours. For example, Inferno. They probably wouldn’t be able to come.”
Wen Xinyi remembered the group of boys he had seen when recording “Cat and Mouse Game” before and joked: “It’s good if they don’t come. If we stand next to them, we’ll look several years older than them. They won’t even be able to tell who the seniors are.”
But according to their debut time, obviously, Inferno was their senior. However, domestically, people don’t care that much about seniority. At most, it’s something fans might bring up when arguing. Normally, whoever is more popular has the final say.
Upon hearing this, Quentin unconsciously nodded: “Mm, the members of Inferno all look very young.”
Wen Xinyi: “…Ahem. When I said ‘us,’ Quentin, that didn’t include you.”
If it weren’t for Quentin’s height, his face after changing back to blonde looked noticeably younger among them.
He wasn’t like Inferno with their childish faces. He simply looked very young, like a child from a Western country. Blonde hair, green eyes, fair skin…even with a cold face, he looked kind of cute.
‘Strange. Does changing hair color really have that much of an impact on a person?’
No, it definitely wasn’t the hair color’s fault. Otherwise, how could Quentin have played the role of a rebellious and arrogant character on the public performance stage earlier? The blonde angel instantly turned into a streetwise yellow-haired punk.
Wen Xinyi’s inner thoughts were quite rich, but it didn’t show on his face at all. He blinked at Quentin, and upon receiving the latter’s confused head tilt, couldn’t help but smile even more.
As they chatted, he suddenly remembered something, turned his head to look for Qi Yang, and discovered that the other party had been silently walking on the very edge.
Wen Xinyi reached out and touched Qi Yang’s shoulder, asking with concern: “Ah Yang, how are the arrangements for your withdrawal from the competition going? Have you really thought it through?”
As soon as he asked this question, everyone immediately looked towards Qi Yang.
Quentin also looked seriously at Qi Yang. He had originally planned to find an opportunity to ask the other party in private, and also chat about the matter of the sasaeng fan outside the door during the second public performance. Now that Wen Xinyi had asked first, that was good too. He definitely wasn’t the only one curious about this matter.
Under the gaze of his teammates, Qi Yang snapped back to reality: “…It’s arranged. The company side should have spoken to the directors.”
Cui Yan asked: “What’s your plan? Can you say?”
“If possible, it would be best to announce the withdrawal during this elimination recording. I’ll come to the venue to watch you guys during the finals.”
Qi Yang didn’t intend to hide it and had a calm attitude: “The director side hopes I stay until the finals, but you all know, the finals require preparing solo stages. I don’t have anything worth presenting. There’s no need for me to take up a performance slot.”
Quentin nodded and agreed: “If you’re determined to withdraw, doing it during this elimination is the most suitable time. Withdrawing during the finals would most likely cause dissatisfaction among the live audience. Withdrawing early can at least give your fans time to mentally prepare.”
Wen Xinyi looked at Quentin in surprise: “Quentin, you understand these things too?”
Cui Yan also looked Quentin up and down as if he had discovered a new continent. He stroked his chin and said: “I never thought… I thought Xiao Ting was just a good student who stumbled into a survival show, and was completely clueless about the entertainment industry.”
Quentin looked back at them without a shred of guilt, letting them inspect him, his face calm: “Any trainee can think of this kind of thing.”
Cui Yan stared at his face without blinking, then suddenly reached out…an ambush!
Quentin instinctively dodged to the side. His reaction was so fast that before the others could see clearly, he was already standing behind Xue Mingzhu.
Xue Mingzhu was stunned for a moment: “…I’ll go. Brother Cui, you even dare to ambush Quentin!”
Cui Yan lowered his hand. His gaze followed Quentin’s dodge and he gave him a thumbs up in praise: “What a quick reaction! Awesome!”
Quentin: “Thank you.”
Xue Mingzhu: “??? What are you thanking him for? He ambushed you! Hit him back!”
Quentin could tell that Cui Yan meant no harm. Even his praise was sincere. His eyes were sparkling under the halo of the streetlight, incredibly sincere.
In that case, it was perfectly normal for him to say thank you back, right?
Cui Yan put his arm around Xue Mingzhu’s shoulder and said seriously: “Don’t you think Xiao Ting’s expression just now was very cute?”
Xue Mingzhu leaned his neck back and made a face: “What the hell are you talking about!”
Cui Yan said frankly: “It’s just touching his face. Xiao Ting and I have touched everything in the gym.”
Xue Mingzhu: “You want to touch his face too?!!”
Wen Xinyi quietly pulled Quentin away from the battlefield and the two of them walked next to Qi Yang, continuing the previous topic.
“Ah Yang, didn’t you say before that your manager stuffed you into our program? How come the company agrees to you withdrawing this time?”
Wen Xinyi frowned, his tone worried: “Are you sure there won’t be any problems with the communication between your company and the director team? Quentin is right. If you’re going to withdraw, you definitely can’t drag it out until the finals. But even now, it’s not suitable to withdraw at this critical juncture. After all, there’s no legitimate reason. Does your company really agree?”
Qi Yang also frowned: “To be honest, I’m very surprised too. Originally, I wasn’t planning on mentioning my withdrawal to the company because Wanming is a film and television company. They almost never pay attention to boy group shows. If it weren’t for my manager insisting on getting involved, maybe no one from our company would have participated.”
Even if someone did participate, it would be people like Qiao Xue, whose acting careers were stagnating and needed exposure, not someone like Qi Yang who was in the midst of a thriving acting career.
Wen Xinyi said in surprise: “Then this time you…”
Qi Yang glanced at him, then looked at Quentin, and only then answered: “Because I discovered that after the show started airing, our company suddenly began to pay more attention to this show.”
So his communication with the company was no longer blocked by his manager, and he had the opportunity to explain his predicament to management… of course, all of this wasn’t easy to do given the closed recording situation. That’s why Qi Yang had asked Qiao Xue, who had already been eliminated, to help as an intermediary.
Although, Qi Yang currently didn’t have much standing in the company and didn’t have much say.
But at least he had one hit drama under his belt and was still young. Fans had already secretly placed him on the list of actors who are about to blow up. If cultivated well, there was hope that he could become a second-tier top star or even a first-tier young actor.
After he firmly expressed his intention to withdraw, there was no shortage of people within the company willing to consider things for him.
Hearing this, Quentin felt like he understood why Qi Yang’s behavior was different from the original plot.
In the original novel, Qi Yang most likely also wanted to withdraw, but Wanming Media didn’t pay attention to “NS”, or Qi Yang couldn’t find an opportunity to communicate his withdrawal to the company. So he had no choice but to go on to form the group and debut.
Perhaps in Qi Yang’s view, forming a group and debuting wouldn’t delay him for more than a year or two. After a year or two, he could still return to his acting career.
Thinking this, Quentin glanced again at Qi Yang’s progress bar. It was still at 0.01%, not moving a single bit.
Strange… Would the progress bar only move when Qi Yang officially withdrew?
Quentin had to consider another possibility. What if Qi Yang’s withdrawal had no effect on the B.E progress bar at all?
If Qi Yang withdrew, he would salonga be part of that group and debuting with them. His future would probably involve joining various film crews and steadily walking his path as an actor.
And at that time, Quentin, along with the other several main characters, would be striving for their idol careers, and would have a hard time keeping a constant eye on Qi Yang. The distance would be too great. If any tragedy occurred, he wouldn’t be able to save him!
Sure enough, fantasizing that the progress bar would jump to 100% in one go because of Qi Yang’s withdrawal… was still too naive.
