As the famous Crown Prince of the capital's elite circle, Wei Ziyu was naturally the golden goose everyone on the show rushed to flatter. Of course he had gone first for the individual vlog recording. He originally stayed afterward only because he wanted to see Jiang Chenglu. Considering they were currently in the broken part of their broken-mirror-reunion arc, someone as tsundere, stubborn, and cold as him was only planning to look from afar before leaving. Halfway through waiting, though, he suddenly felt a gaze focused on him. When he looked over, his eyes met Chu Yu's.
At least, that was what he believed happened.
Before entering camp, he had heard a little about the name Chu Yu. Nothing good. The man had a pile of scandals. Fu Hansong, who moved in the same social circle, had mentioned him in a contemptuous tone. Wei Ziyu had only heard about Chu Yu putting nails in the shoes of a trainee from his own company, as well as Fu Hansong jokingly telling him to keep a closer eye on his little white-flower childhood friend. Apparently, Chu Yu most enjoyed targeting pretty, unknown trainees who had no background.
Now that Wei Ziyu happened to meet the man himself, he looked nothing like the vicious face Wei Ziyu had imagined. In fact, he was deceptively beautiful. But an evil heart could not be hidden by a beautiful shell. Wei Ziyu ought to give him a verbal warning so he would not trouble Jiang Chenglu.
After leading Chu Yu to a deserted shaded path, Wei Ziyu had barely stopped walking before he snapped, "You—"
Before the next word came out, his sentence was hijacked by a sudden broadcast in the air.
[Aren't the universal tops in those classic crematorium-abuse romances always exactly 188 centimeters tall?]
Wei Ziyu replayed what he had just heard in bewilderment. Apart from the familiar number 188, he did not understand most of the content.
But how does he know I'm 188?
[No heel lifts either. Looks like there's less false advertising than Sunglasses Guy.]
Who's Sunglasses Guy?
[Hey, hey, hey, I'm not actually an idiot. I just like slacking. I could guess his next line with my eyes closed.]
The voice seemed to be talking back and forth with something. The more it spoke, the more excited it became.
…So noisy. Whatever. This had to be an auditory hallucination. He had not even started warning the person in front of him.
Thinking that, Wei Ziyu tightened his brows and opened his mouth again. "You'd better—"
[You'd better watch yourself and stay away from Jiang Chenglu. I know all the filthy things you've done before. If you don't want to get thrown off this show, then behave yourself~]
Wei Ziyu, whose entire script had just been stolen, went blank.
The worst part was that the broadcast voice stealing his lines sounded obnoxiously smug.
Chu Yu, standing in front of him, pressed his lips together. His lowered eyelids looked cold and distant, his entire person radiating detached indifference. "What?"
The voice was identical to that infuriating broadcast.
For the first time in his life, Wei Ziyu fell into such a defeated silence in front of a complete stranger his own age.
The actual person stopped speaking, but the broadcast continued at full output.
[Why aren't you talking, handsome? Something on your mind? Can't catch your wife? Is it because your wife would rather wash dishes at a restaurant for money than accept your hundred-thousand-yuan check?]
[Why could that be, handsome? Let me see what chapter you first kiss your wife in. Oh wow, Chapter 101. You're only another three hundred thousand characters of arguing away from catching your wife. Keep it up, handsome!]
…Several veins jumped at Wei Ziyu's temple.
Unlike the others, he almost instantly accepted the setting that he could hear Chu Yu's thoughts. He still did not fully understand what "Chapter 101" or "three hundred thousand characters" specifically meant, but the basic emotion was perfectly clear—the man in front of him was mocking him, and probably in extremely filthy terms!
Heaven above, this was the first time since Chu Yu's birth that someone's first impression of him had been, What an irritating little shit.
[Seriously, this is boring. What does their tragic deep romance, one running and the other chasing, have to do with me? I'm merely a passerby whose life contains not a single ripple.]
[Why is he still not talking? If we keep standing here like this and a fansite photographer gets a picture, people will say we're fanservicing a ship.]
The instant Wei Ziyu heard that, his knees reacted before his brain and he leapt ten steps backward.
[Wow. Such nimble legs.]
…The person opposite him had moved his lips to speak only two words since the conversation began, yet Wei Ziyu already felt like his head had doubled in size.
The Crown Prince of the capital, who had enjoyed smooth sailing for the first twenty years of his life, had never experienced this feeling of meeting his natural nemesis.
He was now genuinely afraid that the broadcast voice would sound beside his ear again.
"What exactly did you want to say?" The person opposite seemed to be growing impatient. His cool brows drew together slightly and his long lashes lowered to cover his eyes. Anyone looking at him would exclaim that an aloof beauty had descended from heaven to join an idol show, but when paired with the inner-thought broadcast filling the air, the picture became something else entirely.
[If he doesn't start talking, I'm going to die of secondhand embarrassment AAAAAAH!]
[I want to crawl darkly, I want to crawl darkly, I want to crawl darkly, crawl crawl crawl crawl crawl, flee this beautiful mortal world at top crawling speed!]
"…Nothing." When Wei Ziyu finally spoke again, even he was startled by how weak his voice sounded. His tone was almost pleading. "You can go back first."
He nearly added, Ancestor, at the end.
He needed to calm down alone. That endlessly blaring broadcast, growing several levels louder every moment, was too mentally contaminating.
"Mm?" The person in front of him seemed to hum carelessly through his nose. No emotion could be read on his expressionless face.
His thoughts, however, could be read. They went like this—
[I guessed his line wrong? How could this be? (confused)]
[Whatever, whatever, I can finally leave. Yay! Takeoff! (ecstatic)]
…Unhinged. A profoundly strange mental state. Once heard, impossible to forget.
Especially paired with that thoroughly cold, iceberg face. The dissonance was even more severe.
While Wei Ziyu remained on his side muttering inwardly and administering therapy for the mental damage he had just suffered, Chu Yu had already escaped eight hundred li away at top speed, running faster than a rabbit. Halfway through, the System suddenly shouted, "Host!"
What?
"Look, that's Jiang Chenglu!"
Huh?
Chu Yu turned his head. Across a shaded path, he happened to see a young man wearing a trainee name tag standing beneath a poplar tree. He was looking down at his empty hands with pursed lips, seeming somewhat dejected.
"According to the original plot, after Wei Ziyu threatens you here, you do behave yourself for a while and stop causing trouble. But another trainee still plays a trick. Jiang Chenglu gets tripped right after leaving the studio. He should be looking at the new injury on his hand now."
Huh?
"Stop saying 'huh'! Detective Yuanfang, I'm telling you all this because I want to hear what you think!"
Lord Di, based on my many years of investigative experience, I normally look at things with my eyes.
The System instantly crashed into a blue screen.
Chu Yu felt through the pockets of his jacket and unexpectedly found a roll of something. He hesitated in place for a while, took more than ten deep breaths, and finally walked toward the gentle, harmless-looking boy across from him with the expression of a man marching to his death.
Jiang Chenglu was listlessly lowering the sleeve he had just rolled up, covering the red mark on his pale wrist from the fall several minutes earlier. When he raised his eyes again, several adhesive bandages suddenly appeared in front of him, along with the cool, sullen face of the young man offering them. "For you."
He blinked, not yet reacting, then tentatively reached out and took the bandages from the other's palm. In the next second, the other man turned and left, movements crisp and clean without the slightest hesitation, leaving Jiang Chenglu even more confused.
But he remembered the name on that person's trainee badge, as well as that objectively beautiful face.
Chu Yu. Based on Little White Flower Jiang Chenglu's many years of experience meeting the wrong people, he decided the other man was a good person.
Meanwhile, after fleeing the gift-giving scene at top speed, Chu Yu let out a long breath and felt twelve parts satisfied with his performance just now: no stammering and no walking with the same arm and leg.
Excellent. Very clean. Probably very handsome too. He had been too nervous to look at Jiang Chenglu's reaction, but since the other man had accepted the bandages, that meant his interaction with a human had been extremely successful!
He had taken another huge step toward overcoming social anxiety! Yay!
Inside his mind, the System was still analyzing the deeper meaning and logic behind what he had just done. "Host, I know this move. It's called taking advantage of vulnerability by offering timely help. You use the smallest possible adhesive bandage to gain the most sincere gratitude, thereby drawing closer, infiltrating the enemy ranks, borrowing the protagonist's luck, and then rising along with him to become the protagonist yourself! Right?"
Huh? Chu Yu lowered his head and checked his pocket again. This time it was empty.
I gave them because I wanted to. I wouldn't use them anytime soon anyway. Better to give them to someone who needs them more.
What misunderstanding do you have about a kind-hearted slacker who eats a lot and thinks very little?
[Ding-dong. Character Jiang Chenglu Favorability +5. Current total Trainee Favorability: 5. Host, please keep up the good work!]
An electronic synthesized announcement sounded. Chu Yu and the System both froze.
Chu Yu asked internally, Was that fake cutesy voice from you?
"No! I'm a mature young man. I do not use a fake cutesy voice." The System paused, then happily added, "That's the automatic announcement when mission progress increases. Host, we have Favorability now!"
Chu Yu nodded emotionally and asked, How much Trainee Favorability did my mission card require again?
"…200."
The System was afraid Chu Yu would see how distant the target was and simply give up, but its Host's thought process was evidently stranger than expected.
He could just give Jiang Chenglu forty more adhesive bandages.
Could he actually be a genius?!
"Where are we going next?"
Chu Yu looked around. The weather was sunny and there was unusually no one nearby. In a good mood, he found a roadside bench and sprawled flat across it.
Sleep.
The only activity scheduled for the afternoon was the individual talent vlog. Once filming was finished, they could rest. Tomorrow morning began three days of rehearsal for the trainees' debut-stage performances. In other words, at least today he could relax.
Sleep, sleep, sleep! The point of being alive is to seize every crack in time and sleep!
For once, the System did not bother him. It simply kept making a quiet, endless keyboard-clattering sound inside his mind. Chu Yu was nearly lulled to sleep by the warm, gentle sunlight when, half dreaming, he asked, "What are you doing?"
"Looking for the BUG. My intuition says something in the System isn't quite right, but my permissions are too low. I've searched for ages and still can't find exactly where the problem is."
Then stop wasting your effort and sleep with me for a while.
"…If you improved the mission progress more and we earned a stage reward, I'd be able to upgrade the System. Then I should be able to figure out exactly what the BUG is."
Chu Yu immediately played dead and pretended he heard nothing.
With BUGs, better to believe there isn't one than to believe there is. Especially this kind of Schrödinger's BUG. If you think nothing's wrong, then nothing's wrong.
When it came to trouble, he had always been very open-minded.
"…" Like an old father, the System sighed and quietly used its permissions to raise the temperature around Chu Yu slightly so he would not catch cold.
He slept unexpectedly well. By the time Chu Yu opened his eyes again, the sun had already set and the surroundings were pitch-black. He rubbed his hands together and was surprised they were not as cold as he expected.
He wanted to take out his phone to check the time, but after feeling around for a while, remembered it had been confiscated. So he slowly stood and prepared to return to the dorm.
At that moment, the same crisp electronic announcement from the afternoon sounded beside his ear, and its content left both Host and System stunned.
[Ding-dong. Congratulations, Host Chu Yu, on receiving 20 points of Audience Favorability. Current total Audience Favorability: 20. Host, please keep working hard!]
