Chapter 57: Halftime Break (1)
Lai Yudong chose to heal the pain of tonight’s public embarrassment with a steaming bowl of instant noodles.
Once someone cracked open the late-night snack option, the others couldn’t resist and quickly followed suit. The result: four bowls of instant noodles—generously provided by Zhou Rui—plus a self-heating hotpot spread across the table of dorm 707.
A rich aroma filled the room.
Liang Zhisheng pulled out a chair and sat down. Not only had he brought in all the clothes hanging outside, but he also reminded the others to crack open a window after showering later, so the dorm wouldn’t reek of food.
The rap lyrics of Silent Night surfaced in Lai Yudong’s mind. Staring at the four bowls of instant noodles waiting to cook, he suddenly felt like he was about to eat his “last meal.”
His head was full of thoughts, but not a single word came out.
That plain line—“I wish you peace and happiness”—fast-forwarded straight to the ending. By the time he came back to his senses, it was as if he had already been inoculated, unconsciously accepting Liang Zhisheng’s impending elimination. It spared them a lot of the dramatic, tear-jerking scenes.
Yet the sincerity behind those words carried a bitter sting.
Someone else was about to leave.
After a night weighed down with unspoken feelings, the next day, Lai Yudong was notified by the staff to head to the makeup room for a quick styling—there would be a half-hour livestream that evening.
“Livestream?” Lai Yudong was baffled.
“Yes. Since you placed in the top three on this round’s star ranking, you’ve unlocked the perk of having your own solo livestream room,” the staff member explained patiently, worried that this rumored socially anxious trainee might not handle a large audience alone. “Don’t worry, it’s easy. Just answer a few questions, read a couple of comments, interact with the fans a little—it’s light work.”
Lai Yudong replied, “Okay.”
Livestreaming—now that, he was used to.
He was forced to soak in livestream rooms every single day.
That evening, Lai Yudong arrived at the recording room ten minutes before the livestream began. He was seated in front of a phone, listening to the PD explain the basic flow while waiting for the staff to finish adjusting the equipment.
Since the system’s barrage comments and the livestream’s barrage comments were identical—but the latter had a delay and couldn’t sync up with the former—the overlapping effect was unbearable. He simply turned off the comments to free his eyes.
At exactly 8 p.m., the livestream started.
Hundreds of thousands of viewers who had been waiting rushed into the room all at once. The screen lagged for a few seconds before an endless stream of comments came pouring out like water from a spring. In the blink of an eye, a fresh flood had already replaced the last.
“Good evening, I’m Miura Yuki.”
The boy with pale golden hair smiled with his eyes as he waved. His soft bangs brushed against his cheeks, giving him a much gentler look than on stage. With only a light layer of foundation and a touch on his brows, he looked almost the same as bare-faced.
If one had to compare, it was the difference between no filter and a 10% beauty filter.
[Aaaaah it’s fresh Yuzu]
[Worth all the sleepless nights grinding that garbage ranking! /cry]
[Baby, have you eaten yet?]
[Mommy missed you so much!]
[Can you talk more today? We want to hear your voice]
At the staff’s signal, Lai Yudong lowered his head to the screen, picking out “lucky fans” to interact with. But he didn’t dare to read out complicated comments—he only chose the easier ones he could answer, just to keep the room lively.
“I’ve had dinner.”
“Stir-fried cabbage with pork, and steamed egg with meat patties.”
“The taste… well, light on salt and oil, good for dieting.”
“I want fried chicken and crayfish.”
As for questions like ‘Baby, what are you studying?’ or ‘Are you still in school, Yuzu?’—he guiltily skipped over all of them. Not because he didn’t want to answer, but because those objective questions had “official answers” he dared not touch.
Even with the system guaranteeing that his real-life experiences could be copied over, he didn’t dare to trust it blindly. If something came up that didn’t match reality and couldn’t be explained, at best it would get him exposed on “black history” callout posts, at worst it might even spark an investigation.
Compared to that, highly subjective questions were much safer. Talking about food at mealtime was a good option—daily life topics could bring him closer to fans.
“—When are you going to eat wheat bran?”
Lai Yudong read out one of the comments word by word. Tilting his head in puzzlement, he then brightened as if he understood—deciding the awkward phrasing must just be missing a few characters.
“Wheat bran? I just had oatmeal porridge this morning.”
[?]
[Help]
[What did I just hear?]
[I’m dying, is this what a wild idol from C-ent looks like hahahaha]
[Reading everything out loud is only going to get you in trouble!!!]
[Isn’t anyone going to stop him…?]
[Isn’t this basically a livestream accident kkkkk]
[Great question! That’s very important to me!]
Lai Yudong: “?”
Did he… say something wrong?
He looked up in confusion. Across the phone, the staff were frantically signaling—waving their arms in an X across their chests, silently mouthing “Don’t ask,” “Skip it,” “Change the topic.”
…It really did seem serious.
Lai Yudong swallowed nervously. He had no idea what was happening, but the strange tension was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.
No, seriously, he hadn’t said anything that bad, had he?
Weren’t they just asking when he last ate gluten? He really had had oatmeal porridge this morning.
Unless… was he supposed to have a gluten allergy in this setting?
While he was still racking his brain in confusion, the comments kept running with the topic—and were only growing more chaotic.
[Baby, that “wheat bran” isn’t the “wheat bran” you think it is…]
[Sorry, this little dummy really doesn’t get it hahahaha]
[What’s “maifu”?]
[My face is just as blank as Yuzu’s]
[Maifu = “mai fu” = fanservice/CP-baiting]
[The way he pronounced it so properly and clearly is killing me]
[Legend, the first man in the industry to openly say “mai fu”]
[The serious look on his face when he said he had oatmeal porridge—I can’t even bring myself to laugh]
[Yuzu just wants to answer every single question he sees equally /cry]
Lai Yudong: “……”
…Oh.
So it was a homophone!?
Whether it was during his cringy chuunibyo phase mixed with his interest in anime, or later when he’d scroll through trending topics, or even just from watching these past few days of comments, Lai Yudong had seen plenty of fangirls shipping male CPs. He’d even heard a bit about the phenomenon of “straight guys in entertainment faking gay fanservice.” It wasn’t anything new to him.
The problem was…
You can’t put a poor Broadcasting Student with only “Putonghua Level 1-B” through this kind of torment!
The first tone and the third tone sound totally different—who would’ve guessed the two words meant the same thing!?
Lai Yudong’s smile nearly slipped. Forcing himself to stay calm, he stared at the bustling comments, wanting to pick one to change the subject—but after a long while, he still couldn’t find a single safe one to read.
[Please don’t pull that industrial artificial-sweetener routine]
[Baby, are you watching? Don’t listen to the trolls! Sure, we dig for sugar, we make up rumors, we have our ways of shipping—but please don’t deliberately fanservice, I’m scared!]
[+1, I don’t want this fake digital candy]
[If an idol group won’t “mai fu,” then go home and farm sweet potatoes! We want fanservice, we want fanservice!]
[I want to see Yu-Zhe ascend together to the heavens within three days]
[Yuki supremacy]
[Yuzu x Yuzu Candy is already locked—keep out, demons and clout-chasers]
[Ugh, CP fans, can you not come make a mess in a solo livestream? This benefit was earned by the solo-fan base, what does it have to do with you?]
[This is so entertaining.jpg]
Lai Yudong: “……”
It was suddenly hard to smooth things over.
There were no bot accounts, no personal attacks, so the “green mode” couldn’t filter it out.
His mood didn’t fluctuate too much, but since the situation had been caused by his own mistake, he still felt somewhat guilty.
Livestream time was limited, and letting it get eaten up by arguments would just ruin the viewers’ mood.
Fortunately, at the critical moment, the staff stepped in: “We’ve collected some questions the Starseekers want to know about.”
Lai Yudong let out a breath of relief. “Okay.”
The staff took out a set of pre-prepared cue cards.
“What’s your zodiac sign?”
“Cancer, July 7.”
“Have you taken an MBTI test?”
“ENFJ? I think it was the Protagonist type.”
[You’re an E-person?]
[How could an ENFJ be socially anxious?]
[Must’ve been a mis-test, he should be an INFJ]
[No, social anxiety isn’t the same as being introverted. And being outgoing doesn’t mean extroverted. The key difference is whether you gain energy from being alone or from socializing.]
[Come on, have you seen how Yuzu treats his fans? And you still think he’s socially anxious?]
[Yuzu is pretty lively going to and from work]
[Slow to warm up doesn’t mean socially anxious, he admitted himself that he just gets shy around new people]
Lai Yudong’s eyelid twitched. He only had a shallow understanding of the recent trend of personality tests, and didn’t know what those letters specifically meant.
Luckily, the comments helped smooth it over for him, even clearing away the false label of “socially anxious.”
“What’s your favorite color?” the staff continued.
Without thinking, Lai Yudong replied, “Yellow-green.”
[Good one, that’s the support color]
[Who just said Yuzu was a little dummy! Doesn’t this show his brain works pretty quick?]
No—it was just a coincidence.
He hadn’t been trying to deliberately please fans; yellow-green really was his favorite color.
Apparently, the origin of the support color came from a fan vote. Yellow-green had been chosen to match the color of his contacts during his first stage. The more “artistic” name for it was primrose green, and it had competed against other high-sounding shades like crow-blue, jade-stone blue, and cloud-peak white.
With a string of peaceful questions, the tense atmosphere eased, and the livestream moved forward smoothly.
Until the staff suddenly tossed out a bombshell of a question—
“Many Starseekers are curious—what’s your Chinese name?”
Lai Yudong: “……”
Wh-what?
His Chinese name!?
On the surface, he maintained a calm expression, but inside he felt as if he’d been shelled with cannon fire. He urgently summoned the system, asking how to deal with it.
Lai Yudong: [Am I even allowed to say this?]
System: [Why not?]
Right…
It was normal for a foreigner to adopt a local name when living here, wasn’t it?
Once that clicked, Lai Yudong calmed down quickly. He smiled at the camera and spoke slowly, deliberately:
“My Chinese name is…”
He paused. Since his transmigration, he had never once spoken his real name. Over time, it had almost begun to feel unfamiliar.
“Lai Yudong.”
“Yu, as in ‘feathered,’ and Dong, as in ‘winter solstice.’”
The moment he said his true name, it felt as though he had finally formed a genuine bond with this world.
[Lai Yudong? That’s it?]
[Sounds so nice! I like it!]
[Baby seems so cultured]
[Me: Yu like Guan Yu, Dong like winter melon]
[So LYD Entertainment is an abbreviation of his name?]
[So from now on, can we call him Dong-Baby?]
The half-hour livestream finally came to an end.
It was an experience he didn’t care to recall—at the very least, his heart had ridden three roller coasters. He could already foresee certain clips spreading wildly online, maybe even going down in talent-show history.
But that was fine. People had to keep looking forward.
So what if he said “mai fu” outright on the official platform!
Looking on the bright side, the “shockingly outspoken” persona was now firmly established. Who knew—maybe he’d even go viral in an unconventional way.
Lai Yudong pressed the button at the elevator. Just as he thought today’s “excitement” was finally wrapping up, a flash of red passed in front of him, and a sneaky figure darted out from the stairwell.
“Miura, wait up!”
It was Li Xu, who looked like he had been lurking for quite a while. He grabbed hold of the bewildered blond boy. Meeting those puzzled dark eyes, he grew visibly flustered, stammering for ages without managing to get the words out.
“What is it?” Lai Yudong asked patiently.
Li Xu deliberately glanced toward the camera. Then, summoning his courage, he raised his voice loud enough for viewers on the other side of the screen to hear every word clearly:
“I want to, um… talk with you…? Somewhere without cameras, is that okay?”
Lai Yudong: “?”
What was this about?
Don’t tell him Li Xu lost his phone?