Regardless of whether the two members of the ECHO boy group could draw questions related to Quentin, Ji Sheng, as ECHO’s main dancer, had already sent out a vlog hastily edited by his studio staff, just two minutes before his and He Shuyi’s live stage began.
@ECHO-Ji Sheng
>Topic: [Captured a few cunning little mice [magnifying glass][magnifying glass]]
>Content: [[Video.mp4]]
Riding on the popularity of the NS finale live broadcast, and also boosted by the energy of the Cat and Mouse Game promotional team, the repost, like, and comment data for this post climbed at an unimaginable speed, quickly reaching the tail end of the day’s trending list.
Although Ji Sheng wrote “a few little mice” in the post subject, anyone with eyes could see who had the strongest presence in this video.
Apart from Ji Sheng himself, who was holding the camera and whose voice ran through the entire video, at least half of the nearly ten-minute vlog focused on Quentin.
Although netizens couldn’t see Ji Sheng himself, they could guess from the angle of the camera pointed at faces that he was sitting very close to Quentin.
Thankfully, Quentin had a youthful look and good skin, otherwise, few people could withstand such a close-range, high-definition, unedited camera pointed at their face, even the fine fuzz on his cheeks was captured clearly.
Quentin’s fans were all squatting in the finale live stream, completely unaware of the vlog featuring Quentin floating on the trending list. The fans of Ji Sheng who clicked on the video first grew increasingly silent as they watched.
Not being able to see Brother Ji’s face in the ten-minute vlog was one thing, but gehe, why did you keep pointing the camera at Quentin’s face?
However, the close-up shot wasn’t the fans’ main focus. The main focus was how could the conversation between Ji Sheng and Quentin be so natural?!
Ji Sheng’s fans screamed internally…Gehe, don’t you think you’re being too proactive! Especially compared to Quentin’s attitude, it makes your proactiveness seem worthless!
Who could tell who was the senior and who was the newcomer here? Gege, aren’t you usually quite fond of acting cool? Where’s your idol baggage? What happened to being slow to warm up? What exactly did you two do on Cat and Mouse Game? This isn’t reasonable!
While Ji Sheng’s fans were questioning life, the official account of Cat and Mouse Game, carrying its promotional mission, excitedly reposted Ji Sheng’s vlog.
@Cat and Mouse Game Official
>Topic: [When the delicate, soft, easily pushed-over “Cat” @Ji Sheng meets the agile, vigorous, miraculously strong “Mouse” @昆廷Quentin, what kind of sparks will fly? See you next Sunday at 12:00 noon on Youth TV, be there or be square [blow kiss]]
[Repost @Ji Sheng [Subject: Captured…]]
1L: [?]
2L: [Delicate, soft, easily pushed over…???]
3L: [You better have made a typo. Brother Ji is a top-tier main dancer. Don’t push this kind of devilish persona onto Brother Ji just to promote a CP. Are you questioning a dancer’s core strength?]
4L: [Uh, uh, the sister upstairs doesn’t need to be so serious. It’s probably just for variety effect. Brother Ji, who cares so much about his image, ended up losing face outside his group after all [facepalm]]
5L: [I envy your insensitivity. I’ve long heard that a certain person has many CPs, but I didn’t expect Brother Ji to get entangled with him after just recording one episode. Smoked fish roe.]
6L: [? The one who posted the vlog was your Brother Ji. The one who pointed the camera at Quentin was also your Brother Ji. Now you’re complaining about them forming a CP? Why don’t you go tell your brother to stay away from Quentin?]
7L: [Sigh, just watch the show. What’s there to argue about? They’re not even in the same group. Isn’t the CP just for fun? Who knows if they’ll even see each other again?]
8L: [Are you fans all this free? Instead of watching the live stage, you’re here arguing. Go and spam the barrage! Losing to anyone is better than losing to teammates!]
The commotion caused by the Cat and Mouse Game promotion almost affected the latest solicitation post released by NS. Fortunately, ECHO had been established for a long time, and Ji Sheng’s fans were more composed than Inferno’s newer fans.
The highly liked questions were all polite and proper, basically revolving around topics like “feelings as a senior boy group member attending a survival show finale,” “thoughts on the profession of being a boy group idol,” and so on.
This round of Q&A passed without a hitch. The next celebrity guests to take the stage were all the members of Aurora.
This was their first group stage on a show in the latter half of the year, obtained despite BKL’s indifference.
The members and fans were all holding back a surge of energy, and the effect of the entire stage was exceptionally good. The fan support was quite impressive, and the barrage was full of praise and amazement.
[Nobody told me Aurora’s skills were like this??]
[They’ve improved so much compared to last year’s survival show…]
[So much better than their collaborative stage with the trainees. See, you have to be with your teammates. This is what group spirit is.]
[The stages of these groups are getting more and more dazzling. How did the production team design this? Don’t forget who the main characters of tonight are!]
[Please be even better to your own kids. Looking at everyone’s flashy makeup and outfits in the waiting room, they’re probably all solo stages.]
[Emm… solo performances are really tough, especially with so many audience members and a live stream. The first few performers also did so well. You must keep your cool, kids!]
[I still don’t understand the production team’s criteria for inviting guests. Inviting Aurora is understandable, since they’re their senior group, but what’s with ECHO and Inferno?]
[ECHO is understandable. Their group members aren’t all here. Only two came. So never mind.]
[As for Inferno, the only reason they can be here is that BKL and the production team have gone crazy together. The fans have already started calling each other rivals, openly and secretly tearing each other apart for half a month. Now the actual members go and sing and dance at someone else’s debut night…who can reason with this?]
[Is there a possibility that these two groups are not on a path of sworn enemies, but one of loving each other [dog head]]
[I can barely tolerate ‘loving and fighting each other,’ but ‘loving each other as one family’… There is a limit to abstract humor.]
Sheng Yuanxu and the others sitting in the small live room, playing the role of hosts, did their best to provide the necessary reactions and enthusiastically responded to the barrage in the live room.
They had lost count of how many times they had seen the barrage discuss topics related to various boy groups, but every time they saw it, they could only pretend not to notice.
After all, they weren’t music critics invited by the show to give sharp reviews. How could they comment on who was good and who was bad? Anyway, they all performed better than they did. Just praise them.
“Our senior sisters’ Q&A session is also over. Hey, next up are our friends’ stages, right?”
Sheng Yuanxu glanced at the barrage and laughed: “You ask me as if I know the stage content. How would I know? I didn’t watch their rehearsals. But I did film a behind-the-scenes vlog. I haven’t edited it yet. Once it’s edited, I’ll show you all how everyone prepares for a stage backstage.”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. Everything you mentioned was filmed. Quentin, Yan Qiao, Xinyi, all of them. I went right after they finished lunch, and they were just starting their makeup… Huh? Brother Ji Sheng posted a backstage vlog?”
Sheng Yuanxu was stunned: “What do you mean? It’s only been a few hours, the live broadcast isn’t even over, and he’s already edited a behind-the-scenes vlog? Does it have to be so competitive?”
Zhuang Zhuo quietly took out his phone on the side, quickly scanned the trending search list, and whispered a reminder: “Theirs is a promotional vlog for Cat and Mouse Game. They have a mission. It’s different from ours.”
Sheng Yuanxu: “Oh oh, got it, got it. Don’t rush me. I’m just saying, aren’t you guys curious about what kind of stages everyone’s makeup and outfits correspond to?”
“It’s said to be a medley stage of 20 solo segments strung together.” Tang Heng picked up the conversation. “Episode 9 showed part of their rehearsal process. I remember Quentin wrote another new song.”
Sheng Yuanxu gave him a teasing look: “Huh, you only remember Quentin? Unfortunately, Episode 9 was updated last Sunday. Their main rehearsals were this week, so Episode 9 had very little about the stage. I don’t know if the production team will release anything after the finale live broadcast.”
While they were chatting, Aurora had already returned backstage. The stage lights gradually dimmed. With the host’s announcement, the main characters of tonight’s debut night finally took the stage once more.
The performance order of the 20 trainees was based on the reverse order of their rankings, consistent with the playback order of the previous growth film.
Although the NS boy group survival show had become extremely popular in the fourth quarter of this year, with the number of trending topics several times that of other variety shows in the same period, the show’s popularity did not equal the popularity of individual trainees.
Those who paid close attention would discover that the off-stage attention received by different trainees in the show was vastly different.
The constant influx of external traffic was abnormally dispersed among the hundred trainees. Even among the top twenty, there was a noticeable gap between the top ten and the bottom ten, let alone the gap between the debut group and the non-debut group.
Some trainees gained fans by absorbing the show’s popularity, but some trainees managed to break out of the circle and become famous on their own, attracting more passersby, raising the popularity, and feeding back to the show.
Many people online said that the NS production team should kowtow to Quentin. And honestly, this claim wasn’t really just a fan filter.
Quentin’s fans privately made statistical charts. They searched for trending topic data from various platforms across the internet by time period and finally reached a conclusion.
—Saying that Quentin alone attracted 80% of the show’s traffic was incorrect. It should be that Quentin alone provided 80% of the show’s heat.
The trainees who were not yet eliminated were probably unaware of this distorted distribution of attention.
Being able to break into the top twenty, persist until the show’s finale, and stand on the live debut night stage was undoubtedly a fortunate event worth anticipating and getting excited about for them.
But the reality was—
In a venue much larger than the previous three public performances, the area below the stage was a vast, dark sea of people, with every seat filled.
The people on stage couldn’t see the faces of the distant audience, but they could see the colors of the different light boards, the well-wishes on the hand banners with light strings hanging from them, the confession messages and requests for food (fan service) on the small black message boards…
Among the countless signatures, there were trainees with higher rankings, invited celebrity guests, and the mentors sitting by the stage. Only they, the trainees with lower rankings and no hope of debuting, appeared very rarely.
When they were still sitting in the backstage waiting room watching the live broadcast of the venue on TV, they had already discovered this harsh reality from the camera that occasionally panned to the audience.
The larger the venue, the more obvious this contrast became.
Whenever Quentin’s name was mentioned during the Q&A session, or simply when the large screen showed the group shot of everyone in the waiting room, the audience below would shake a vast, sparkling, boundless sea of jade-green.
Even if it wasn’t Quentin, trainees in the debut group like Wen Xinyi and Yan Qiao also had their own bright spots.
Only occasionally, when the camera panned to the entire audience, could they find the light boards bearing their own names among the cracks.
Because of the obvious contrast, they inevitably felt anxious and disheartened, but as the live stage progressed, through intermittent conversations with their companions around them, the trainees gradually stabilized their mindset.
‘I already knew there was no hope of debuting even before the finale began. So what if the gap is bigger than imagined? The final stage must end most perfectly, so there will be no regrets.’
With such thoughts in mind, they took the stage, their eyes scanning the audience, quickly finding those scattered light boards shaking excitedly because of their appearance.
The moment the lights gradually brightened, they couldn’t hear the applause or cheers from the audience. Their ears only had their own trembling breathing and accelerated heartbeat.
Where was the accompaniment? Why hasn’t the music started yet?
The first trainee on stage walked to the corresponding spot according to the rehearsal plan. When his footsteps landed, the familiar music began.
Sing, dance, look at the camera…just like in rehearsal, everything happened smoothly, without any difference.
He didn’t know how bright his eyes were under the camera, nor could he see how determined he looked as he tried hard to control his expression, pressing his lips tightly together, turning up the corners of his mouth, sweat dripping down his skin.
One by one, the brief two-minute segments connected the trainees’ final stages. Amidst the barrage spamming names, a long barrage suddenly appeared.
[ECHO group fan, here because of the reputation. As the ‘final stage’ scheduled after the senior male and female group, it wasn’t as stunning as I imagined, and the skills didn’t exceed my expectations for a survival show, but it was still good to watch, a stage I would watch a second time.]
As this barrage scrolled by, more and more barrages broke free from the meaningless spamming and arguing and began to focus on the stage itself.
[+1, it’s good to watch. Although I didn’t remember these people’s names clearly, they all look good. They look even more handsome on stage than in the waiting room. It’s quite different from the NS I imagined.]
[I like this one in the yellow hat. He dances very handsomely.]
[The one in the yellow hat is called Zhang Weitian. He loves dancing, and has ten years of dance experience.]
[The boy with the colorful stars painted on his face has a very nice voice.]
[His name is Lin Shen. You can follow his forum account. He often live-streams singing~]
[Don’t you think their performances are full of vitality? Although not as skilled as the seniors, they strangely give people a feeling of going all out.]
[I guess they must be very nervous, but they performed well. For a survival show stage, this quality is already very good.]
[No wonder NS is so popular. It lives up to its reputation.]
Why do you always have to stop right before their performances ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
I’ll be praying for the next update to come as fast as possible. !