Royal Ch.1

Chapter 1: Almost Contemptuous

Fu Xunying sat alone in the empty reception room, feeling conflicted. Although he was “in disguise for a private visit,” he hadn’t expected that no one would actually care. After waiting there for a long time with no one showing up, he couldn’t help but laugh at himself.

Finally, Fu Xunying received an “inside” message: [Today is the trainee evaluation day. Director Zou and Director Liu have all gone.] Today the company was selecting a trainee to participate in the talent show “Starlight” alongside Prince Fu Xunying.

Fu Xunying was the youngest son of the CEO of Xingqiong Entertainment. He was joining the talent show to add some polish to his image, then would quickly move on to starring in a historical drama. So Fu Xunying was sure to debut — after all, he was the crown prince. The company’s trainees were essentially companions who studied alongside the prince. Choosing a companion for studying required such a grand setup?

Curious, Fu Xunying stood up and headed toward the evaluation venue.

Training trainees was a small part of Xingqiong Entertainment. The company was not short of money, and the evaluation hall was set up very formally. Fu Xunying stood at the back door and overheard some people talking inside.

Pushing open the door, the first thing that caught Fu Xunying’s eye was the big screen, which honestly reflected the trainees’ performances on stage.

“Hello teachers, I’m Jiang Yuan, and I specialize in dance.” The trainee holding the microphone looked young and nervous as he introduced himself. Fu Xunying thought to himself, Wow, what a long chin — the face shape is just like a mango.

How did the company’s talent scouts work?

The purpose of the self-introduction was to let people hear the voice, so the camera then shifted to the side. At this point, some people in the audience were whispering.

In contrast to the earlier coldness, Jiang Yuan’s face turned red. Who was this guy?

Fu Xunying sat at the back, watching the big screen — the person had originally been looking down with eyes closed, only raising his head the instant the camera focused on him. His eyelashes fluttered, lifting his eyelids to glance at the camera.

The whispering grew louder.

The boy on the big screen had a deeply curved connection between his brows and eyes, but it wasn’t overly sharp. His double eyelids were narrow at the front and wide at the back, curved like a peach blossom. The outer corners of his eyes drooped slightly — a look that should have conveyed innocent gentleness, but because of the prominent under-eye “aegyo-sal”, even when he wasn’t smiling, his eyes shimmered beautifully.

Fu Xunying leaned back and thought, ‘This guy is really scheming.’ He was already a celestial beauty, but standing next to Mango (Jiang Yuan), he just became even more ethereal.

Yue Zhaolin: “Hello teachers, I’m Yue Zhaolin, specializing in expression management.”

“Pfft.”

The laugh was so quiet that Yue Zhaolin didn’t even notice someone sitting at the very back of the hall, wearing a black mask and a baseball cap, laughing at him. Fu Xunying chuckled to himself, and immediately a strong sense of crisis rose in his mind.

‘Reading companion to the prince?’

‘I think this guy is here to steal my spotlight.’

Fu Xunying felt that this Yue Zhaolin looked exactly like his character model. If the two appeared together on the show, he wouldn’t be able to outshine this guy — then who would really be the prince?

His expression darkened.

Sometimes, rivalry is that simple — it starts as soon as you meet.

This evaluation was divided into individual and group assessments. Right now, it was the group assessment: six trainees working together to perform one song. The chosen song was an overseas dance track, with vocal, dance, and positioning all at a medium difficulty — not easy.

Yue Zhaolin wasn’t lying; he really was good at expression management.

When the music started, Yue Zhaolin moved. His dance was memorized by rote — he didn’t understand the logic connecting the moves. There was no precise timing, no accents, and no rhythm.

In contrast to Jiang Yuan beside him.

But Yue Zhaolin had one advantage — a good figure and a good-looking face. Although his dancing lacked quality, his movements looked pretty. The evaluation required singing and dancing at the same time, moving on stage, and even the invisible pressure of leaders watching from below — yet he was steady.

Yue Zhaolin knew what his strengths were: face and physique.

So when it was his turn to stand center stage, even for a simple move — covering the lower half of his face and revealing only his eyes and hands — he had practiced it hundreds of times. He recorded himself, replayed the footage over and over, studying how to position his hand more attractively, how much of the iris should be hidden by the upper eyelid to look best.

Why so much effort?

For money.

Being the crown prince’s companion on a talent show — as long as he stuck around until the later stages without needing to debut — he’d earn 500,000 yuan.

After tax.

How great was that?

Yue Zhaolin was a practical and broke person. With that kind of money in front of him, not giving it his all would’ve felt like a betrayal of himself.

Logically, good-looking people shouldn’t be poor — but Yue Zhaolin was different. No one knew that just a month ago, he had been a she. For the first twenty years of life, Yue Zhaolin had lived as a normal girl. Then one day, she woke up and found her gender had changed.

Even the face and body had become the exact model she had customized in a game.

It was this “authentically game-modeled” face that had caught the attention of a talent scout visiting his hometown, and he was signed by Xingqiong Entertainment almost immediately. Yue Zhaolin took this high-paying job seriously.

Plus, having been a girl, he understood what female fans liked in their idols — a unique kind of charm that belonged to that person alone. Truly all-round idols were rare.

Whether it was strong vocals, a good-looking face, eye-catching dancing, or just personality — as long as you had something, you could attract a group of fans. Yue Zhaolin’s face was his asset.

That face, paired with just the right touch of expression control, was enough to make people overlook his mediocre singing and dancing skills at first glance.

“Alright, stop.”

Director Zou signaled for the music to be cut. The trainees didn’t even dare to breathe loudly and stood in a stiff line, waiting for judgment.

Director Zou knocked on the table and called over the assistant manning the camera in the back. “Pull up the direct cam footage from just now. Let’s all take a look.”

The fixed-angle footage had no camera movements — it was brutally honest.

Director Zou was in his forties or fifties, and spoke in a stern, no-nonsense manner. Director Liu, on the other hand, was much younger and particularly skilled at tracking and generating online buzz. But when she spoke — it cut straight to the heart.

“Wang Haoran, explain to me — why did you suddenly give a ‘devilish smirk’ at the start of your performance? The audience isn’t dying from your charm, they’re dying from cringe.”

“Jiang Yuan, didn’t you win a street dance championship?”

Jiang Yuan quickly smiled and replied, “Yes…”

Director Liu looked at him and said, “I’m not complimenting you. Do you even realize, now that you’re on the idol track, why are you changing the choreography on your own?”

“Hou Qiyi, why was there no sound during your rap section?”

“Chu Ran, is the food in the cafeteria really that delicious?”

“Gu Heng…”

Director Liu went down the line, critiquing one after another. Finally, it was Yue Zhaolin’s turn. Fu Xunying had expected some kind of dramatic praise-after-criticism setup, but instead, Director Liu asked—

“Yue Zhaolin, during your performance, you glanced once at me and Director Zou, then never looked over again. Can you tell me why?”

Yue Zhaolin gripped the microphone a little tighter. “I was nervous.”

Insecurity often comes hand in hand with poverty. The former Yue Zhaolin had never performed in settings like this, and rarely made direct eye contact with others.

Even though training had helped him overcome stage fright, when locking eyes with Director Liu, he still instinctively looked away.

“Nervous?” Director Liu gave a soft chuckle. “Even if you were nervous, you did very well in this performance. On that stage, I could only see you.”

Hearing this, the expressions of the other five trainees could no longer be concealed.

Director Zou nodded. “Other than some weakness in your fundamentals, everything else was solid. That’s all for today. You can go now. Tell the next group to come in.”

The attitude of the two executives was clear. Even if the others were upset, no one dared show it in front of the higher-ups. Swallowing their frustration, they left the room.

—

Elevator.

Chu Ran let out a sneer. “It was decided from the start, yet they still made us come all the way here for nothing. Impressive.”

The company’s plan to send someone to compete on Starlight wasn’t a secret — the trainees all assumed the pick would come from among them. Who would’ve thought they’d get a parachuted-in outsider instead?

And during this assessment, they’d been completely outshined by that outsider. Their chances were slim to none.

This shortcut — “four months on a talent show to instant stardom” — was now being snatched away right before their eyes by Yue Zhaolin. How could they not be bitter?

Hou Qiyi also laughed, vague and sarcastic: “Well, can you blame them? With looks like that, of course both Director Zou and Director Liu are taken with him.”

Yue Zhaolin was thoroughly annoyed. Who said relationships between guys were simple?

Setting aside whether the whole assessment was just a setup for future PR stunts, let’s talk about the trainees themselves — if we don’t look at appearances and judge only by skill, some of them ran out of breath while singing, some changed choreography on the fly, some just phoned it in, and some had even eaten themselves out of shape. Picking the best from a weak bunch, the top spot still belonged to Yue Zhaolin.

And when it came to looks? Forget it.

Unable to beat Yue Zhaolin, they didn’t reflect on their own shortcomings — just griped and complained.

Yue Zhaolin’s annoyance showed clearly on his face. Maybe the emotion in his eyes was too obvious, because it riled a few of them up. Blood rushed to their heads.

“You—!”

Ding—

Yue Zhaolin had been leaning casually against the railing in the elevator. As soon as the doors opened, he straightened up — and suddenly, the height difference became apparent. Standing at 1.85 meters plus shoes, with broad shoulders towering above them, the pressure he exuded shut the others right up.

Typical — they only bullied those weaker than them.

Didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman, this kind of behavior was always the same.

Yue Zhaolin gave a light chuckle, turned, and walked off. As he was about to exit through the front doors, the receptionist called out to him:

“There’s someone waiting outside. Don’t wear your mask.”

“Outside? Who is it?”

The receptionist whispered, “It’s sasaengs — a group of young girls. They found out about the trainee evaluations and have been waiting out front.”

The company usually wouldn’t drive them away — after all, it served as a kind of early publicity for the show. But it meant the trainees had to bear the pressure of being exposed early on.

The reason the receptionist told Yue Zhaolin not to wear a mask was because it was an order from higher up. They wanted him to be photographed.

Aside from the sasaeng fans, there were also reporters — all part of the company’s marketing strategy.

Now it made sense to Yue Zhaolin. No wonder Sister Li had messaged him to “show off a little” and come back to the dorm later.

Not that he intended to go back to the dorm anyway — it stank.

Daily cleanings couldn’t get rid of the odor; just breathing it in made him want to vomit. What made him even more uncomfortable were the constant conversations in the dorm — never far from the topics of girlfriends or sex — even though they were all supposedly future idols. It was disgusting.

Yue Zhaolin stepped out the front doors without a mask. From the street corner came the soft click of shutters, clicking at a steady rhythm, accompanied by hushed, barely restrained chatter.

He headed to a café on another street. Footsteps followed behind him, but Yue Zhaolin pretended not to hear. The second floor was empty, so he picked a single armchair and sat down.

To his surprise, the other trainees who had just been in the assessment with him also followed him in.

Just ten minutes ago, they’d been putting on a textbook display of male jealousy and cattiness. Now, their expressions had completely changed — as if nothing had happened — and they were trying to make friendly small talk with him.

Some even tried to get handsy.

Yue Zhaolin didn’t need to guess why they had suddenly changed their attitudes — they were trying to fan-service with him in front of the sasaengs’ cameras. Boy groups weren’t just about singing and dancing; there was also the ever-marketable concept of “bromance.”

They had been trained on this by the company. Yue Zhaolin didn’t mind acting a little on camera — but he wouldn’t let others use him for clout. Especially not people he disliked.

So Yue Zhaolin leaned back in his chair, letting the trainee’s hand hover awkwardly in the air.

Chu Ran flared with anger and embarrassment. “You—!”

Chu Ran had originally thought that while Yue Zhaolin might be the one chosen by the company, they likely wouldn’t send just one person to the show.

So there was no need to make an enemy out of him. If they could generate some buzz before the show, maybe the company would notice the popularity and let him go too.

But what Chu Ran hadn’t expected was that even knowing the cameras were watching, Yue Zhaolin would still reject him — and so bluntly at that, with zero regard for saving face.

Click—

The sound of a camera shutter.

And not just one.

The lenses didn’t just capture the stunned and furious expressions of Chu Ran and the others as they lost control — they also caught Yue Zhaolin’s expression, the one he wore without a mask.

In truth, he didn’t really have much of an expression at all. One hand rested casually on the arm of the sofa, his body slightly angled to the side.

His posture was relaxed and nonchalant, not even sitting up straight. That position made his neck and collarbones curve into a clean, striking line, while the hand draped down at his side bent naturally.

But through the lens, it gave off a hard-to-describe feeling.

Almost… contemptuous.

TOC >>

**TN

Aegyo-sal – Korean “eyebag” make-up