Trainee Ch.10

Chapter 10: Off the Stage

After the post-interviews of all 101 trainees ended, the live broadcast room shut off its cameras.

The filming location for Climbing to Stardom was a long distance away from the trainees’ dorms. A shuttle bus was needed to travel back and forth, and anyone who’s followed survival shows would know—many fans would camp out nearby to snap “commute” photos of their idols going to and from the set.

Although it was a 24-hour multi-camera livestream, it only covered the trainees’ dorm life and daily practices. There were no extra cameras set up along their commuting route.

There were two reasons for this. First, during theme song recording and public performance rehearsals, everyone’s schedules would become erratic and uncoordinated. Having multiple cameramen take shifts to stand by would be unnecessary, while mounting GoPros would make it feel like surveillance footage from a security room.

Second, the production team encouraged fans to follow them offline. This kind of “visiting the set” interaction gave fans a sense of engagement that the livestream didn’t offer, while also keeping the show trending outside the program itself. Fan-taken content was both great publicity and an effective way to retain fans—it killed two birds with one stone.

Outside the filming venue, the sky had already darkened.

Many people had left due to the late hour, but quite a few remained to keep waiting.

Among them were site masters and fans of already well-known contestants, freelance photographers hoping to earn money off popular or promising trainees, and unaffiliated bystanders just there for the buzz and maybe to find a new favorite. Phones, cameras, hand banners, lightboards—everyone had at least one piece of gear.

After standing in the biting cold for so long, people inevitably started to talk.

“They still haven’t come out?”

“If I wait any longer, I’m gonna fall asleep standing.”

“Didn’t the interviews end already?”

“Maybe there’s other stuff they need to take care of—it won’t be that quick.”

“If I’d known it would go this late, I’d have just gone home.”

“It’s not that bad—this is only the beginning. Their schedules are going to get even crazier later on.”

…

Everyone craned their necks, trying to spot if any trainees had come out—when suddenly, a stir erupted from the direction of the main gate.

“They’re coming out!” someone shouted excitedly.

A few figures emerged from the building, followed by more people trickling out after a few seconds.

In an instant, the sound of camera shutters and flashing lights filled the air.

“Who are the ones at the very front? They’re walking so fast, they’ve left the others behind!”

“They’re from Sijia—I saw Mo Li!”

“Where’s Qu Xincheng? I can’t find him! I’m freaking out!”

“In the middle to the back, just in front of that red-haired guy.”

“Song Yanxi! Your cat is in the live broadcast room! Just stay there with peace of mind!”

“Zhao Yifeng! Sing boldly! Big Sister Danfeng will always support you!”

“Xu An just waved at me—ahhhhh!!”

It was a dark night with only the streetlights showing the way. The distance between fans and the building was long. And with 101 trainees, each with a different style, standing out in the crowd was no easy feat.

Even Qu Xincheng—one of the post-interview segment’s most frequently mentioned “best visuals”—couldn’t be spotted immediately by his fans, unless his looks were truly on another level compared to the others.

The most eye-catching way was to dye your hair a highly recognizable color. A textbook example was the red-haired trainee Li Xu, who had become a visual reference point—his head stood out like a cherry tomato in the sea of people.

Next came distinctive traits or behavior: like the web drama group rushing to the front as if desperate to clock out, Yin Zizhen who stood noticeably shorter than the others, Xu An smiling and waving to fans, or Zhao Yifeng walking alone on the side, his little ponytail bobbing with every step.

In the end, it all came down to appearance. Under the lens that treated everyone equally, who stood out was clear at a glance.

And there was one person who checked all three boxes.

A light blond-haired boy trailed unhurriedly at the end of the group. The cold moonlight fell upon his hair like a layer of silvery glaze, making him look like a precious piece of art on display—do not touch without permission.

Streetlamps passed by one after another, their dim yellow light flickering across his face. Even with everyone wearing makeup and bathed in both moonlight and artificial lighting, his skin still appeared at least a shade lighter than most others.

His eyes were slightly lowered, hands resting casually in his jacket pockets. His upper body didn’t sway at all as he walked, and his poised posture made him stand out from the crowd like a runway model, forming a stark contrast to some trainees who staggered awkwardly.

At a glance, he was easily among the top three most eye-catching people in the group.

“Who’s that blond guy?” A fan filming her own idol couldn’t resist the temptation of a stunning face. Her camera lens subtly drifted toward the light blond boy as her conscience screamed in protest—betraying her bias in real-time. “He’s so good-looking…”

“Mo Li, obviously. Aren’t you literally holding his lightboard?” A site master with a telephoto lens didn’t even blink, furiously snapping photos of Jiang Yangfan with focused devotion.

“No, no—not him. I mean the one with the lightest hair color.”

“You mean the one near the back? Wearing a black jacket? The pale-as-a-glowstick guy?” someone nearby asked.

“Yes, yes! That’s him!”

“His name’s Miura Yuki,” another person explained helpfully. “A bunch of people were asking about him under the trending topic, using screenshots from the livestream. He already has several dedicated forum threads—people are posting about his looks, sharing expression memes and catchphrases. Looks like he’s a rising star in the making. Definitely worth investing in early.”

“That name… wait, is he a foreigner?”

“Who even knows if he—”

The voice cut off abruptly.

The helpful fan forcefully stopped herself mid-sentence, raising her DSLR with one hand while frantically waving the other in a random direction, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Yuki! Yuki, look this way! Miura Yuki—! Baby, are you hard of hearing?!”

The fan who “climbed the wall”: “…”

So she was just here to push her fave after all.

…

Lai Yudong followed the crowd out of the building and was immediately hit by the sharp contrast in temperature.

With the indoor warmth of the air conditioning gone, the winter night wind cut into him like a blade. His thin jacket fluttered in the air before falling back down, like a dry leaf drifting in the wind.

He shivered from the cold. The dryness made his colored contacts uncomfortable, and he had to lower his lashes slightly to shield his eyes from the biting wind.

The chill jolted his groggy mind awake. Filming was temporarily wrapped up, and with it, the livestream had also ended—for now, it wouldn’t resume until they boarded the shuttle and arrived back at the dorms. The rare moment of peace finally allowed him to calm down and properly think about what to do next.

That said, his mind was a complete blank.

It wasn’t like he was prepping for grad school—grinding practice exams day and night for months on end, hoping that effort alone could turn a bicycle into a motorcycle.

Survival shows weren’t like beauty pageants or singing contests. Even if someone restarted their life and trained hard for eight or nine years, it still didn’t guarantee a debut. If looks and skills were all that mattered, there’d be no need for the audience to vote contestants into stardom one by one—the show could just have professionals score them.

But personality, public image, ability to attract fans, playing into shipping culture, creating viral moments—all of that came into play. And beyond the contestants themselves, there were bigger forces at work: capital vs. capital. Screen time and online buzz were all controlled behind the scenes.

And as for Lai Yudong’s temporary agency, LYD Entertainment… just from the name, it sounded like a shady, unreliable shell company.

Rather than hoping his agency could be of any real help, he might as well pray that Climbing to Stardom was one of those rare, fair, no-backdoor-deal kind of shows.

Which is why he held an extremely pessimistic view toward debuting.

“Yuki! Yuki, look over here!”

“Miura Yuki!”

“Yuki, turn your head! Look this way! Yuki!”

…

Liang Zhisheng couldn’t help but glance at the light blond boy walking beside him, who remained completely unresponsive.

Steady footsteps, vacant gaze, frozen expression—everything pointed to one fact:

Yep. His soul had left the building.

“Yuki.” Liang Zhisheng nudged the blond boy with his elbow. As expected, the latter looked up in confusion, clearly not all there. “Wake up, a bunch of people are calling your name.”

“Me…?”

Lai Yudong snapped back to reality like waking from a dream. Only then did he register the voices calling out in the distance—repeating that new, still-unfamiliar name. His brain had been automatically filtering it out. If not for Liang Zhisheng’s kind reminder, he might’ve walked the entire way like a deaf man.

Pulling diva moves on the very first day of filming—what a bold move.

Well, given his current popularity, it wasn’t diva behavior… more like “fun-size attitude.”

Lai Yudong turned toward the source of the voices. The moonlight, streetlights, and camera flashes blended together with no rhyme or reason—blurring the view like a washed-out neon sign. Or perhaps, like a far-off galaxy stretching out between them. Everything reflected in his eyes looked surreal.

Without the help of livestream comments, he had no idea what everyone was thinking.

—Wait… don’t tell me they didn’t watch the livestream?

Aside from the reasons already mentioned, Lai Yudong found it hard to explain why so many cameras were pointed at him. Even he wanted to erase that humiliating memory from his mind with a single click—he could only imagine how stupid he must’ve looked through other people’s eyes. The barrage of “hahahaha” flooding the screen had already proven he’d fumbled right at the starting line.

But regardless of whether these people would leave disappointed once they realized he was just a pretty face with nothing behind it, the fact remained: right here, right now, they were braving the long, cold night for him.

So, without any hesitation, the moment he turned toward the voices, the light blond-haired boy let a soft smile bloom across his face. The curve of his lips softened the sharpness of his features—as if a frozen winter lake was beginning to melt under the touch of spring, trickling into a gentle stream. It was beautiful enough to make hearts race.

In an instant, a chorus of gasps rose from the crowd, and the frequency of camera flashes spiked sharply.

“YUKI!!!”

“Please debut, Yuki!”

“Cool guy, smile more!!”

Before Lai Yudong could react, a soft snort came from nearby. Someone muttered under their breath in a tone laced with passive-aggressive jealousy, “Wow, must be nice to be born good-looking.”

Lai Yudong: “…”

Well, isn’t it?

He glanced away in confusion, sweeping his eyes calmly around, but the voice had been too low and muffled—he couldn’t tell who said it.

In any other setting, “being good-looking = being worthy” wouldn’t necessarily hold true. But in a boy group survival show? That was a different story. There’s a well-known saying among fans: An idol being unattractive is an unforgivable sin.

But really, who said it didn’t matter.

There were so many good-looking trainees—no need to take it personally. And even if it was about him, he might as well take it as a compliment. He wasn’t about to get mad over someone stating the truth. If anything, it was recognition of his looks.

Including Lai Yudong, quite a few people had heard that strange, passive-aggressive comment—but most of the trainees tactfully chose to pretend they hadn’t. Whatever persona they had on stage was one thing; in reality, the odds of someone being a truly naive and blunt fool were close to zero.

Except for one person.

“Ugh, who’s losing their mind this late at night?” The one who snapped back was a red-haired boy whose voice alone sounded like he had a short fuse. His tone was louder than the earlier mutter. “No screen time so you can’t keep your mouth shut?”

“……”

The atmosphere instantly fell into an awkward silence.

Lai Yudong was stunned. He couldn’t help but glance over with admiration in his eyes.

A true savage had arrived.

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