Royal Ch.68

Chapter 68: Piercing

[Melon Group Eating Melons | I Suspect This Studio Is Just a Gathering Place for Useless Slackers]

———

[Original Post]

RT.

Why can other companies get Hollywood resources, throw money into buying views on Douyin, and have 800 marketing accounts in place the moment anything happens?

At the end of the day, it’s just because they don’t care enough and aren’t willing to spend money on their artists.

[2F] Every time I open Douyin I see that face. No matter how many times I click “not interested,” it doesn’t work. The marketing is stuck to me like a leech.

Compared to our own studio—it might as well be dead.

[5F] OP, are you an xj (attention-seeker)? Throwing shade while pretending to praise? Hollywood has been in decline for ages. Who still sees a cameo role as a valuable resource?

Real actors don’t even care about Hollywood anymore.

Only idol stars still act like it’s a big deal.

[12F] You only get to say “I’m not impressed” after you’ve acted there. If the actual celeb hasn’t even had a role, can the fans stop trying to pretend? It’s hilarious. Now they’re even trying to act like they’re all in it together.

There’s a fundamental difference between “not impressed” and “not qualified.” Please take note.

[17F] Another Old Fart fan shedding skin again.

We all know that Old Fart only had a [mere] three-second appearance in Hollywood—as an ugly Asian caricature. Could you please stop letting actresses inhale his farts?

Thanks. Great.

[21F] When you lose an argument, you start slapping labels. My fave isn’t even Old Fart. Go ahead and insult him if you want, this is hilarious.

[26F] Honestly, in the Chinese entertainment industry, Hollywood roles don’t even count as real credentials. What really matters is starring in movies by big domestic directors, and having solid ratings and box office numbers.

[35F] All the major directors’ movies have already started filming, and he didn’t get any of them. After shooting, those big-name directors usually take several years off—by then he’ll probably be yesterday’s news.

Think about it calmly: idol stars are like shooting stars—bright, but they don’t last long.

No idea why people in this group are getting so worked up.

[41F] No one’s worked up.

It’s just xj (attention-seekers) hyping things up from both ends, trying to manufacture the illusion that he’s some kind of Purple Star of C-ent. But honestly? No one in the Melon Group cares about his Hollywood cameo.

—

Starlight Building.

“Multi-platform livestreaming?”

As the staff led Fu Xunying through the door, they said, “Yep. It’s not just domestic platforms—we’ve applied for cross-border streaming too.”

After all, he’s got decent traction overseas.

Aside from the added hassle of getting top-level approval, setting up the livestream just means an extra camera or two.

“Xunying, have a seat. The makeup and hair team got held up, they’ll be here soon.”

Since the livestream is another chance for exposure, it doesn’t really matter if the other trainees go barefaced or not—but the royals definitely need proper styling.

With nothing to do, Fu Xunying started watching the muted compilation from the “Soda Festival” on Bilibili. “Muted” means all the backing tracks were removed—only the raw vocals remain.

The Soda Festival featured singers, influencers, and idols from K-pop, J-pop, and C-ent. Some troll had compiled a “muted” edit just for laughs.

[REAL MUTE! 2024-04-12 Light Soda Pop Festival Full Performance Compilation]

Over 2.1 million views in just two days, with 58,000 comments.

No emotion—only judgment.

In the muted version, old singers sounded awful, K-pop groups looked like mimes, Japanese singers had embarrassingly bad pitch, and C-idols showcased the full spectrum of vocal disasters—

A deflating balloon;

A goat with trembling vocal cords and flattened range;

And an unmovable rheostat that couldn’t hit high notes or drop low ones.

Fu Xunying’s minor pitch issues didn’t even make it into the top ten of the Soda Festival’s “worst vocal” rankings.

As for Yue Zhaolin, there was only one summary: the Tide fandom treated the muted compilation like a promotional video.

Thanks to Xingqiong giving a little push behind the scenes, the impression that spread along with the compilation was: “Yue Zhaolin dared to sing, and he didn’t do badly.”

Just like that, Yue Zhaolin gained another big wave of casual fans with positive impressions.

Xingqiong had originally planned to find a tragic angle to emotionally manipulate these casual fans into becoming diehard stans. But before they could even move, some “negative” buzz had already shown up.

Saved Xingqiong a bit of marketing money.

“What buzz?”

Yue Zhaolin had just found out about this. He was in a separate makeup room, waiting for the stylist.

Liu Li said, “Do you remember the front row of Zone A at the Soda Festival? There was a guy wearing a black sleeveless top and red glitter eyeshadow?”

Yue Zhaolin: Hmm… maybe?

He wasn’t sure.

“He’s a somewhat well-known beauty influencer. He’s now calling you out online, saying you singled him out and deliberately skipped shaking his hand while shaking hands with the people behind him.”

Yue Zhaolin: “Did I?”

Curious, he searched for keywords on Douyin and found the video. It actually had quite a few likes—over 300,000.

The video started with a dramatically flamboyant hair flip:

“Besties, I’m the poor soul who got deliberately ignored by Yue Zhaolin.”

Then came a zoomed-in shot of him glaring.

“I didn’t want to bring it up, but just a casual mention on my feed and suddenly this big celebrity’s fans came at me in full force—group cyberb*llying—”

Yue Zhaolin: “?”

He watched another two minutes.

Yue Zhaolin: “??”

Was that guy really talking about him? How did it end with an accusation that he might be discriminating against minority groups—and that’s why he deliberately ignored him?

Liu Li explained, “Beauty influencers’ diehard fans aren’t any fewer than some flop idols’. Plus, he’s clearly trying to ride the hype. His wording is really provocative.”

In the beauty community, there’s one sacred rule: drama.

Small things get blown up, big things go nuclear.

But after watching that video clip, Yue Zhaolin remembered a bit of it.

He had been about to go onstage to sing the chorus, and time was tight—so he’d only had the chance to interact with a Tide fan holding a small card and a little moon sign in the back.

Saying he “deliberately” ignored someone… was kind of fair, technically.

So that’s how the controversy started.

—Even though it stirred up backlash, if given the chance again, Yue Zhaolin thought he still wouldn’t give up the opportunity to interact with a Tide fan.

He clicked into the suspiciously low-comment section of the video. The influencer had enabled “followers only” comments—so while there weren’t many, every single comment was a scathing attack on him.

“Pfft.”

Yue Zhaolin let out a soft laugh.

Liu Li said, “That post is getting a lot of likes, but for your fanbase, it’s a great chance to strengthen loyalty.”

Xingqiong would handle the narrative from here.

With the minor incident wrapped up, it was time to move on to more serious matters.

Liu Li handed Yue Zhaolin a storyboard sketched by Herland, explaining as she did:

“This is your character in the movie.”

Come to think of it, landing this cameo had a lot to do with Etienne.

He was white, and the fashion and Hollywood industries had always been closely connected—

Etienne’s unusually strong support of Yue Zhaolin had led to a spike in both magazine sales and buzz overseas. That’s when Herland dropped his former indifference and finally took things seriously.

However, not long after Etienne returned to China, his father was hospitalized due to a sudden illness. Etienne had to return home urgently, and the two of them hadn’t seen each other since—just the occasional message here and there.

The last message Yue Zhaolin had received from Etienne said that his father had suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and was admitted to the ICU. After that, Etienne never replied again.

He hoped the news would be good.

With that thought in mind, Yue Zhaolin opened the storyboard—

The character was an Eastern youth dressed in a long black robe, long hair braided, and tasseled earrings dangling from his earlobes.

“It’s a bit stereotypical, sure. But the character is well-written, the styling is solid, and since the cameo lasts less than a minute, it doesn’t require deep acting skills.”

Training was about to begin soon anyway—after all, a good performance could bring major dividends.

Yue Zhaolin asked, “By the way, the shoot is in late May. I’ll need to be at Xijiang Ancient Town—will that conflict with the show’s recording schedule?”

Not to mention, he still had dance practice.

“No need to worry.”

Everything would be scheduled around Yue Zhaolin’s availability.

The perks of being the golden goose.

Coincidentally, GreenFruit platform’s Director Ma had heard about today’s cross-border livestream and decided to personally stop by—partly to supervise, partly to check in on his personal cash cow.

No one knew what was going through his head, but among the staff: “…Great, the boss is acting up again.”

His presence would only make things harder.

…

Maybe he heard their silent complaints, because Director Ma—beaming and full of cheer—was stopped in the hallway.

The one who stopped him—

Was Meng Yu.

Director Ma vaguely remembered him: a trainee with a habit of stirring trouble, ambition sky-high, actual skills not so much.

Meng Yu lowered his gaze, polite and deferential.

“Director Ma, could I have a moment of your time?” Then, seeing Ma looked disinterested, he added, “It’s about Yue Zhaolin.”

Director Ma raised an eyebrow: “?”

Well—he could spare a few minutes.

They stepped into an empty room just off the hallway.

Director Ma found a spot to sit down, the buttons on his shirt stretched taut over his beer belly. He waved a hand and gestured to Meng Yu: “Xiao Meng, sit.”

Facing the plump, greasy-looking Director Ma, strangely enough, Meng Yu felt a rare sense of calm as he began delivering the speech he had prepared in advance.

He started by rambling through a long-winded recounting of his own experiences, leaving Director Ma visibly confused and half-lost.

Then Meng Yu said: “Director Ma, before the first public stage performance—didn’t the production team actually have no intention of letting Yue Zhaolin debut? He was just a sacrificial pawn to generate hype, wasn’t he?”

“……”

Director Ma had been getting impatient—until that moment. He paused mid-breath and glanced up: “…Tch.”

Ah, so this is what the kid’s been building toward.

He tapped his fingers on the table and said bluntly, “Alright, let’s cut to the chase. Are you recording, or is this a phone call?”

In that instant, a chill ran down Meng Yu’s spine.

…How did he know?

The only leverage he had was a recording.

Only with a confession on tape could he cash it in.

If he could get someone from the top of Starlight to admit they deliberately manipulated hype for clout, it would be a direct violation of the NRTA regulations—

“No manufacturing conflict. No excessive hype.”

With that ironclad evidence, he could use it to blackmail his way into staying… and snag a debut spot.

But Director Ma was already done.

He reached straight into Meng Yu’s pocket, pulled out the phone—which was still actively recording—and hung up the call before tossing it onto the table.

Bang.

Director Ma patted Meng Yu’s shoulder, chuckled, and said, “Kid, you’re still too young. Don’t go around thinking everyone else is an idiot.”

“I’ve eaten more salt than you’ve eaten rice. Xiao Meng, you’ve still got a long life ahead of you—go learn.”

On the surface, it sounded like kindly advice from an elder.

But in this moment, there was no doubt it was laced with mockery.

…He’d been exposed.

Again and again, he made plays—and still ended up with nothing.

Sitting there in that chair, Meng Yu had the urge to punch that smug, sneering expression off Director Ma’s face and make him shut up.

…

He didn’t dare.

—

Meanwhile—

The livestream venue for tonight was a spare room that the production team had specifically cleared out. There weren’t many seats—just a dozen or so.

After Yue Zhaolin entered, a few others arrived as well. Everyone greeted each other, and Yue Zhaolin caught sight of Tan Shen.

He asked, “Feeling better?”

Tan Shen: “…More or less.”

On the day of the Soda Festival, Tan Shen had suffered a major psychological shock. After that, the phrase “avoided him like the plague” perfectly described how he treated Yue Zhaolin.

According to Tan Shen himself, he was going through a “cooling-off period,” because if he got too close to Yue Zhaolin, his brain would short-circuit.

Well, two days had passed, and it seemed he had mostly recovered—at least now he could make eye contact with Yue Zhaolin… sometimes.

“Everyone take your seats, the livestream will begin soon.”

Because it was being broadcast on multiple platforms, the areas not caught on camera were swarming with tense staff members, standing at the ready.

“Got it.”

Once the tech was calibrated and the time struck, a staff member gave the cue—and they were live.

The trainees saw the prompt and bowed in unison on camera:

“Hello everyone, we are the Starlight trainees. Nice to see you again—”

The bullet comments exploded:

[Right on time!!]

[YUE ZHAOLIN—]

[Aaaaah baby, I’m here!]

[With that white hair, Yue-chan looks more like Princess Kaguya lol]

[Yue-chan, it’s been so long!]

Yue Zhaolin, with his silver-white short hair, sat right in the center, looking evenly toward all the cameras:

“Good evening, everyone.”

Fu Xunying greeted in English, Cen Chi in Korean, and Mao Ding in Japanese.

“We were recently invited by QingPao to visit Hainan, and we were honored to perform as special guests. Did everyone catch the stage?”

[I was there in person—the stage looked amazing, but it was way too short, I didn’t get enough of it ]

[The Soda Festival stage has tons of fancams on YouTube, with several hitting millions of views. The highest one’s about to break 10 million. After YouTube’s update, that kind of number is definitely top-tier among his peers. Fancam king—Yue-chan]

[Watched the “Temperature Gap” stage on YouTube, and I can’t stand not seeing Yue-chan anymore. Can you come to Japan for a fan meeting?]

[I’ve donated my whole wallet to Yue-chan]

[Was that bomb-shot-level hottie at the festival real?! Now he looks as pure as a college freshman in Hongdae—totally dizzying kkk]

[Can you come to a music festival in Germany?]

[Beauty]

Some of the comments were translated with machine tools, others weren’t, so Yue Zhaolin couldn’t understand all of them—he had to rely on Cen Chi and Mao Ding for translations.

He replied to the Japanese comments using the Japanese Mao Ding had taught him:

“Thank you very much for your love and support. I’ll do my best for the upcoming performances.”

[So cute www]

[Just passed the JLPT N1 and hearing Zhaolin speak Japanese is adorable. He hasn’t learned proper pronunciation yet, so his words are a little mumbly, like a child]

[Yue-talk! Too cute I’m gonna die]

[Korean next, jebal (please)!]

[Wow, there are so many fruits and snacks on the table in front of them, plus skewers—are they going to make Korean street food like candied fruit? Bing-tang-hu-lu?]

Yue Zhaolin spotted an English comment and responded in English with a smile:

“Today we are making a traditional Chinese snack—Tanghulu.”

[Tanghulu and malatang are both Chinese—what’s that got to do with Korea?]

[That accent though…]

[The purpose of language is communication. As long as native English speakers can understand what he’s saying, can we stop with the accent shaming?]

[Forget the accent—foreign girls love it.]

There were so many comments, even the arguments flashed by in an instant. The trainees saw the barrage of bickering but naturally pretended they didn’t.

Chu Li began introducing the food: “This section is for fruit—lots of kinds. In the middle, we have snacks. And here we’ve got… uh, dried insects.”

It did sound a little strange, but really, it wasn’t that outlandish—like silkworm pupae and grasshoppers, for example.

[Did I hear that right? Dried…insects?]

[There are spicy strips and marshmallows in the snack zone too]

[Strawberries!]

[Other than fruit, are they really going to use anything else for the candied skewers? I just realized I’m a traditionalist—I can’t handle this…]

[Did I see that wrong? It looked like something was sparkling near Zhaolin’s ear?]

[Ugh, is that an earring?]

[I thought Moon didn’t have his ears pierced? It’s probably a clip-on, like one of those clamp-style ear cuffs?]

[Doesn’t look like it]

[?!]

[Did… did he get his ears pierced…?]

[Is there a vlog of him getting it done? I want to hear that soft little gasp of pain… delicious…]

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