Trainee Ch.44

Chapter 44: Halftime Break

[So miserable, only three people from Peppermint A made it in.]

[Three is already a lot—Firefly’s two groups didn’t get a single person through.]

[Serves them right. If you don’t dare pick a popular strong team, and the two weakest, most obscure groups stick together, of course this is the result.]

[Peppermint B all advanced.]

[Isn’t the second performance going to be released tomorrow?]

Amid the barrage of comments, Fu Hanyu brought this livestream to a close.

“The rankings for Stage One of Climbing to Stardom have now been announced.”

“All rankings for this stage will be reset. The voting channel for Stage Two will open tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Starseekers, please cast your precious vote for the trainee you support.”

“To those who didn’t make it into the top fifty-five, I’m sorry—you will have to stop here. I hope this journey will be your starting point, not your end.”

“Use the remaining time to say goodbye to your friends.”

The advancement area and elimination area were separated, and the trainees began to gather toward the center stage. Some rushed eagerly down the stairs from the higher seats, while others found companions below who shared their fate.

Lai Yudong was one of the former.

He spotted Zhou Rui, who had also been searching for him. The moment Zhou Rui saw him, tears welled up. He ran over, throwing his arms around him and refusing to let go.

“I’m sorry… We promised we’d make it to the second performance together, but I broke my word…”

“I kept not hearing your name, and I was so afraid I’d dragged you down… It’s really great that you got fifth place…”

“Yuki, you must… you must debut…”

Lai Yudong gently patted his friend’s back to comfort him, repeating “Definitely, definitely” over and over.

If he cried too, Zhou Rui would definitely break down completely.

After leaving the recording site, the eliminated trainees were told to immediately pack their belongings and, within an hour, board a bus to leave Climbing to Stardom.

“I don’t get what the rush is,” Li Xu muttered as he pushed open the door to dorm 707, clearly unhappy with the show’s cold arrangement. “They just have to make us leave tonight, and only give us an hour to get ready.”

Xu An thought about it seriously. “If they left tomorrow, they’d have to provide breakfast.”

“Is breakfast really the issue here?” Lai Yudong couldn’t help commenting—at first it even sounded like Xu An was subtly accusing the program team of being too stingy to feed them.

“If it were me, I’d rather leave now,” Liang Zhisheng said. “Leaving tomorrow would mean waking up early. Plus, once you’ve been eliminated, having to stay for another night is just—”

“Bad luck,” Li Xu finished for him.

“…Agonizing,” Liang Zhisheng said, pretending not to hear.

[Well said]

[LOL, it is bad luck]

[Can Li Xu do a livestream reacting to the full episode after he’s out? I’d watch that]

[I’m worried the camera in dorm 707 is going to get cut off one day]

Lai Yudong gradually came around.

Maybe there was no need to tell Li Xu to tone down his bluntness—it wasn’t a bad way to win fans.

After all, in the entertainment industry, real, unfiltered people were what audiences loved—provided you didn’t mind taking some flak for it.

About half an hour later, someone knocked on their dorm door. The bed closest to it belonged to Lai Yudong, so he got up to open it.

Standing outside was Zhou Rui, his eyes still a bit swollen from crying. He was holding a big plastic bag filled with all sorts of instant food.

“This is the rest of my stash,” he said. “You four can split it.”

Lai Yudong’s eyes lit up. “All for us? That much?”

“Mm. I’m not that close with the few people left in my dorm. I gave Chu Tianyi and Zhao Yifeng two packs each, and the rest is all yours. Whenever you miss me, just eat one.”

“That won’t do—this’ll be gone in minutes,” Lai Yudong said, deliberately keeping his tone light.

Zhou Rui couldn’t help but laugh. “Up to you.”

[Will Yuzu think of Zhou Rui every time he stays up late practicing dance…]

[The real duo’s been teaming up since the theme song]

[Yuzu’s gotten so much livelier than at the start, but now Ruier’s leaving QAQ]

[Shy Yuzu just opened up / crying]

[Don’t twist the knife, I can’t stand goodbyes]

[You have to meet again after this!]

The barrage wasn’t just stabbing the viewers in the heart—it hit the people involved, too.

Only Lai Yudong knew that, most likely, they would never meet again.

If he completed the mission, he’d return to his original world. If he failed, he’d move on to the next one. Either way, even if by some freak coincidence he saw Zhou Rui again, that Zhou Rui would belong to a parallel world and have nothing to do with him.

When it was time to leave, the bus was waiting outside, and all the eliminated trainees dragged their suitcases out of the dorm building.

The streetlights and moonlight blended into one, linking the far-off heavens with the earth in this moment.

Bundled up in a cotton coat, Lai Yudong stood to the side of the doorway, watching one familiar face after another pass by—some belonged to people like Zeng Kai and Luo Feiran, who had left him with unpleasant memories; others were trainees he had a good impression of but never got the chance to speak with.

Zhou Rui pulled his suitcase over and gave him a light hug. “You have to debut.”

“Mm.” At a moment of parting, Lai Yudong felt the most fitting thing to say was a blessing filled with sincerity. “Safe travels, and good health.”

“You too.”

Lai Yudong watched from a distance as the boy with ash-brown hair boarded the bus. Once seated, Zhou Rui smiled and waved at him through the window.

“You’re not about to cry again, are you?” Li Xu, hands in his pockets, was driven back inside by the cold wind at the door. “I don’t have any tissues—the last one I had, I gave to you in the studio.”

“You only carry one tissue with you?”

“How could that be? I—” Li Xu started to explain, then suddenly realized it was a trap. “Anyway, it’s fine, I gave it to you.”

Lai Yudong smiled, choosing not to expose him. “When I’ve already prepared myself mentally, I’m not that easy to make cry.”

Besides, he’d already cried once.

If he let himself cry again, his eyes would be swollen in the morning.

Although the second performance song selection was happening tomorrow afternoon—and not being on stage meant he only needed to appear bare-faced, so whether his eyes were puffy wouldn’t matter much—that was true for an average trainee.

But after leaping thousands of ranks to first place, his first job had arrived.

After the livestream ended, Lai Yudong was informed by the production team that tomorrow morning, he was scheduled to film a mid-roll ad for the main broadcast.

He was both surprised and flattered.

Previously, Xu An had been called in to shoot a mid-roll ad before even the first episode’s rankings were out, but everyone knew he was one of the show’s main talking points in the early stages. It was considered one of the most direct indicators of popularity, second only to ranking itself.

Lai Yudong felt a bit uneasy about tomorrow’s shoot. Never mind ad videos—throughout his entire life, he had only ever done three large-scale photo shoots, and all of them were school graduation pictures.

But Xu An reassured him not to worry—filming an ad was easier than dancing.

If it had been anyone else saying that, Lai Yudong might not have believed it, but coming from Xu An, he felt it was at least partly credible.

…

The next morning.

Before seven o’clock, Lai Yudong boarded the bus. Along with him was Su Junzhe, whose popularity had also been rising.

Maybe the production team got a discount when booking trainees in bulk.

“Here, for you.” Su Junzhe handed him a piece of chocolate. “I asked Mo Li—looks like this shoot will take quite a while, so eat some chocolate to prevent low blood sugar.”

“Thank you.”

Lai Yudong unwrapped it and took a bite, his expression freezing slightly as a rich bitterness spread through his mouth—it was sugar-free chocolate.

It was too early for the cafeteria to be serving breakfast, and boiling water for instant noodles in the morning was troublesome. That’s why last night, when Su Junzhe had come over to ask if he wanted some chocolate, Lai Yudong had readily agreed.

But he’d forgotten—this was someone whose veins practically ran with iced Americano. There was no way he’d offer something like milk chocolate with its high sugar content.

Expressionless, Lai Yudong shoved the chocolate down in a few quick bites, as if he were drinking bitter Chinese medicine.

Even though the mid-roll ad would only be about ten seconds long, the workload was huge. Makeup alone would take at least two hours, not to mention wardrobe styling, on-site discussions, and script checks—all equally basic steps.

The actual filming time was even more unpredictable. Both of them were first-timers at shooting ads, and neither knew how many takes it would take to get something satisfactory.

Even if they were prodigies, wrapping in a single take existed only in fantasy. Even seasoned stars would film multiple takes to ensure the best result. This wasn’t some 200-yuan low-budget birthday greeting video—unless the sponsor’s standard for a mid-roll ad was simply “good enough to air.”

So time was extremely tight—if the two of them were delayed, the entire afternoon shoot would have to wait for them to arrive.

Because of contract confidentiality, there would be no livestream coverage of the ad shoot; behind-the-scenes footage would only be released after the main broadcast aired.

“Come, come, let me explain—it’s very simple.” A staff member hurried over with a few sheets of paper, taking advantage of the makeup session to brief them in order to save time.

The sponsor for the mid-roll ad was a newly signed bath product brand. This time they were launching two upgraded versions of existing products—in plain terms, just new packaging and a couple of new scents, then a perfectly justified price hike.

The sponsor’s requirement was that each person would be responsible for promoting one of the new scents.

The staffer first pulled Su Junzhe aside to explain the honey-scented product’s shoot plan, then turned to Lai Yudong with a separate request.

“Yuki, right?” The staffer flipped to a new page in the packet. “We’d like you to do the rose-scented one. Since your confetti-blowing gif went viral, our idea is to have you blow rose petals instead. How exactly you do it is up to you. Don’t worry, the demands aren’t strict, it’ll be quick—but to give the editors plenty of material, we’ll need several versions of the action.”

It was obvious they were trying to ride his viral moment’s popularity.

Lai Yudong smiled politely. “No problem.”

Little did he know, that sentence was the start of a nightmare.

Due to limited space and crew, they couldn’t film both ads at the same time. The first to start was Lai Yudong, since his hair and styling were finished first. The bath product ad aimed for a clean, natural visual style, so his outfit was a plain white shirt.

Filming began.

The pale-blond-haired boy cupped a handful of soft pink rose petals in both hands. The fresh, delicate floral scent curled around his nose. He gave a gentle blow, and the petals scattered into the air like ribbons unraveling, drifting down like butterflies riding the wind.

From a distance, the scene was full of a springtime atmosphere.

“—Okay, that’s good.”

The staffer hadn’t been lying—the initial pass went quickly. The only time things slowed down was at the very start, when Lai Yudong was still getting the hang of it. Fortunately, he adapted fast, and before long his performance met the requirements.

Then came the “give us several more versions” phase.

From holding petals with both hands to holding them with one… from cupping a pile to cupping a single petal… from blowing forward to blowing upward… from smiling while blowing to smiling after blowing… from blowing halfway to blowing all the petals away…

Every possible variation, they tried it.

For a brief moment, Lai Yudong suspected he’d accidentally been roped into some sort of game’s character illustration project, with himself as the model providing multiple pose variations—theme: lung capacity stress test.

Why were there so many ways to blow petals!?

Just before he managed to blow himself lightheaded, he finally heard the heavenly words announcing the end:

“Good work. Next person, let’s keep it moving.”

Lai Yudong let out a breath of relief and strode quickly out of the shooting area, swapping places with the long-waiting Su Junzhe.

As they passed each other, Su Junzhe grinned. “How’s it feel to shoot an ad?”

With a pained expression, Lai Yudong replied, “I never want to blow anything again in my life.”

<< _ >>