Chapter 77: Again
Back when he was still awkward with singing and dancing, even then, there were no faults to be found in Yue Zhaolin’s facial expressions.
He really knew how to use his face.
Even Yue Zhaolin’s anti-fans had to grudgingly admit this.
But He Jie hadn’t expected that he could evolve even further in this area—she couldn’t come up with a more specific way to describe it—
The Yue Zhaolin on screen gave her a strange, unfamiliar feeling for the first time.
There weren’t many lights onstage; the atmosphere simulated the coming of night, with darkness devouring the last traces of dusk.
The intersecting beams of light wove together like a net, slowly tightening in the direction of Yue Zhaolin.
Thump.
Like the beat of a drum—no, a heartbeat.
Suddenly, a ring of dark red lit up on Yue Zhaolin’s wrist. Not just his wrist—also his neck, his ankles, his knees. Light strips.
A symbol of restraint, and also confinement.
Just as the audience barely dared to breathe, Yue Zhaolin and the person behind him, Li Ying, spun and switched places.
On stage, every performer’s arms and necks were seemingly pulled up by invisible strings.
Forming a triangle with Li Ying and Yue Zhaolin at the center, the group moved in sync with a gliding step.
Standing in the middle, Li Ying raised his hands in a gesture of control and began to sing:
“Pushed forward by threads, even the smile is clearly fake.”
The camera then cut to Chen Wu.
His solid street dance foundation made him the one to handle the more difficult moves.
He bent low, nearly folding his upper body to the ground, and when he rose again, his whole body stuttered like a rusted machine, knees bending unnaturally backward.
“The soul masked by a hollow shell, unseen by the audience around.”
The moment Chen Wu started singing, Yue Zhaolin could tell—he was slightly off beat.
In the latter half of the stage, as Yue Zhaolin and Cen Chi moved into position, they exchanged a glance with Li Ying. The three of them tacitly chose to act as if they hadn’t heard anything and continued the performance.
What mattered more was a complete stage.
Chen Wu himself had panicked a little, but his quick reflexes kicked in—he skipped the word ‘around’ in the second half of the lyric and managed to catch the beat.
Yue Zhaolin let out a quiet sigh of relief.
But what he didn’t expect was that, while Chen Wu managed to pull the song back on track, Rong Ruize, who sang after him, didn’t.
·
From the audience’s perspective—
Most of them weren’t professional musicians, and “Puppet on Strings” was a brand-new song, so some people didn’t even notice the off-beat singing.
But what happened next was clearly off.
Rong Ruize, who followed Chen Wu, was visibly flustered. He didn’t open his mouth to sing and even forgot his dance moves.
But that part was supposed to be his solo, and the camera was focused squarely on him.
He stood there on stage—if not for his panicked expression, just from his body language alone, he looked like a lucky audience member picked at random to come up and walk around.
Behind him, Yue Zhaolin furrowed his brows as he prepared for his own part.
But the director didn’t call cut, so Yue Zhaolin immediately stepped forward and picked up the lines Rong Ruize missed:
“Drowning in my own lies, guarding the heart’s broken pieces.”
His quick response made the dazed Rong Ruize beside him look even more out of place by comparison.
In the audience—
“What is he doing…?”
“Why did he just freeze up?”
Next to He Jie, one Tide-sister didn’t look good. She was holding back her emotions, already on the verge of losing it:
“Moon is already out here saving the stage, and he’s still just standing there?”
Some others were even more blunt.
“There are seven people singing one song, and he can’t even remember his few lines?”
“This is supposed to be a group performance. If you can’t handle it yourself, don’t drag everyone else down. I’m done.”
“Wait—can they do it over?”
The director still wasn’t reacting, and He Jie began to worry that this performance would just be left as is.
As the murmurs from the audience grew louder, a hurried voice came through Rong Ruize’s earpiece:
“Start trembling! Hurry up!”
The music cut off.
The director picked up the mic:
“Our sincere apologies, dear Starlight Producers. The stage will be paused for a moment.”
Stage slip-ups were a huge emotional trigger—viewers online hated people who dragged down their team. If this episode aired as-is, the hate comments would flood in like a tidal wave.
But that could also mean a huge surge of black traffic for Rong Ruize. And turning negative attention into fame was still a form of fame.
However, Rong Ruize’s agency didn’t approve of that path.
So they chose a different story—a medical one. He was instructed to act out a condition to explain the mistake: stage panic disorder, characterized by symptoms like shortness of breath, trembling, and numbness in the limbs.
People with this disorder experience such extreme anxiety on stage that they’re unable to continue performing.
A few men dressed as assistants, all wearing masks, rushed onto the stage.
In full view of the audience, they wrapped a trembling Rong Ruize in a blanket, soothing him while escorting him offstage.
“What happened?”
“He caught a cold on stage or something?”
The noise grew louder. The scene descended into chaos.
Staff members made a show of stepping onto the stage. One of them whispered something into Li Ying’s ear—he hadn’t even caught his breath yet, and now he had to clean up the mess.
And how would they clean it up?
By saying Rong Ruize had been working so hard lately that it triggered stage panic disorder.
Li Ying took a quiet breath, then bowed deeply to the audience along with Yue Zhaolin and the others.
“We hope everyone can give the ‘Puppet on Strings’ group another chance.”
The audience, of course, had no objections.
“I don’t mind a redo. That one guy messed up, it wasn’t anyone else’s fault.”
“Exactly. Yue Zhaolin was already stepping in to save the stage, and he just stood there like a lump.”
“If you’re sick, then rest. Don’t get on stage. It’s better for everyone.”
Rong Ruize, who hadn’t yet left the broadcasting studio, heard the comments and his expression turned ugly.
“One mistake, and they act like I deserve a death sentence.”
He threw off the blanket.
“I’m going back on stage.”
His manager stopped him.
“What are you doing? Don’t forget—you have stage panic disorder!“
What—miraculously cured after just two minutes? Was he trying to create a modern medical miracle?
Rong Ruize was indignant.
What did that mistake have to do with him?
It was all Chen Wu’s fault, and Yue Zhaolin’s, too—stealing the spotlight by stepping all over him.
·
Backstage.
Li Ying quickly asked, “Rong Ruize’s part—let’s give the verse to Zhaolin, it transitions well from his own lines. As for the chorus, who can take it?”
Cen Chi immediately raised his hand.
“I can.”
“Anyone have objections?”
Fu Xunying and the others shook their heads. After the mess on stage, no one’s nerves were steady. If someone could step up and carry the performance, it was a relief for everyone else.
“Great. Zhaolin, do you still remember Rong Ruize’s choreography?”
Yue Zhaolin: “I remember.”
They’d practiced so many times, he had nearly memorized everyone’s moves.
Li Ying paused, caught off guard.
He had been prepared to tell Yue Zhaolin that improvising would be okay if he didn’t remember it all.
He hadn’t expected that—for once—the opportunity had landed in the hands of someone who was actually ready.
He Jie waited for a few minutes before finally hearing the director team’s voice again.
Soon after, the six-member version of the “Puppet on Strings” group stepped onto the stage once more.
“Let’s go!”
What had started as scattered cheers from the audience gradually gathered strength, coming together as one.
In the midst of those cheers, Yue Zhaolin heard his own name. He closed his eyes briefly, took a deep breath, and once again, the familiar sound of the music box played in his ears.
Give it everything.
…
The theme of the verse was restraint and control.
The dynamic between the doll and Yue Zhaolin, between Yue Zhaolin and Li Ying—all reflected the synchronization between the puppet and the puppeteer.
As he hummed the melody, his eyelashes cast shadows beneath his eyes like butterfly wings. His nose bridge and cheeks had an almost porcelain-like quality.
A sheen of gloss brightened the curve of his lips, and the gentle smile mirrored that of a perfectly crafted puppet on display.
He wore a silvery-gray shirt with an intricate, ornate collar. The cuffs were layered with delicate rose-patterned lace adorned with crystals.
The fabric at his sleeves was thin as a cicada’s wings—soft and billowy—and when he lifted his hand, it folded back to reveal pale, slender joints.
The puppet, mimicking the puppeteer, created a marionette that was wholly his own. Though he smiled, there was a sinister innocence to it.
A kind of trembling madness hidden behind the curve of that smile.
Beneath the flawless exterior of the puppet was a core inherited from its master—the same desire to control, the same urge to possess.
Not human, but almost.
The rest of the group crossed behind Yue Zhaolin in a horizontal formation, like mirrored puppets in motion.
But Yue Zhaolin’s movement lagged by just a second.
The lights descended, forming a delicate cage around him—a solo that wasn’t truly solo.
“Drowning in my own lies, guarding the fragments of my heart.
Fingertips trying to tear open the night, the moment a shooting star streaks by.”
On the big screen, a sticky shadow draped across his face. His thin eyelids trembled faintly, as if he were gradually waking up.
He reached out with his fingertips, trying to touch the sky.
He had “come to life.”
“Rust on my joints, loneliness in my gaze, I learned the sobs of humans, hid away my repeated smile.”
He was still smiling.
Especially those soft, dewy lips—the upper lip lighter in color, the lower fuller and tinged with red—reminiscent of flower petals. His smile was undeniably beautiful.
But it gave off an illusion—
The person before them was both an indistinct mist and a dazzling shard of ice—dangerous, yet irresistibly inviting. A contradiction that lured people in.
The scene froze and flashed, simulating the power struggle between the strings and the puppet. The dark red light strips flickered.
From the arms to the shoulders, then the neck, the sense of breaking free was clear. His left leg kicked sharply back, then retracted, seamlessly transitioning as he switched places with Fu Xunying.
Yue Zhaolin disappeared from the big screen.
He was now half-kneeling at the edge of the stage, silvery-white hair falling over the upper half of his face.
In the front row of the audience, Tide sat frozen. This version of Yue Zhaolin… was completely different.
Even when it wasn’t his part, he held the audience in rapt attention.
—Like a tide of darkness, shadow slowly consumed his cheeks. His head was lowered, his face hidden, only his lean, powerful back and waist visible.
He tilted his head back, gazing up at the sky.
His chest rose and fell, his Adam’s apple rolled, strands of hair cascaded under the backlight.
He seemed to be struggling to escape an invisible dream, but his consciousness was being dragged downward, sinking into the deep sea.
When the chorus hit, the melody shifted—twisting into something eerie and surreal, threaded with rebellion and violence.
The choreography followed suit, incorporating more “body percussion” — slapping palms against knees, nodding to mark beats, sharply punctuated shoulder movements.
“The one who gave me a name, the one who controls me, the one who curses me.
The strings are shackles between us, and the cracking wood grain is my scream.”
The chorus carried a strange, fragmented beauty in its physicality, and Yue Zhaolin’s movements had a broader, more expansive framework than before.
It was like being caught in an absurd masquerade, dancing within the flames of death.
The joy that comes with freedom—and the pain that comes with it—once tasted, can’t be easily given up.
You can’t let it go, ignore it, suppress it. The emotions pile up, ferment, and eventually tear open a vivid, bleeding hole in a soul-less chest.
No heart grows there—only a gaping, blood-soaked cavity.
Attempts to fill it are futile.
Longing.
Desire.
The stage was ablaze with it.
Yue Zhaolin tossed his head, his shoulders dropped, and his lower leg jerked to the right, as if strings were pulling him in different directions—before he violently broke free.
Li Ying reappeared behind him, the two of them positioned like a puppet and its shadow.
Li Ying grabbed Yue Zhaolin’s wrist, while his other hand mimicked the turning of gears.
As though he were rewinding snapped strings, reweaving them around the puppet. The light-constructed cage reappeared around them.
“Da, da—da.”
The bass drum sounded like creaking joints.
Yue Zhaolin, along with the others, twisted his neck, lifted his elbow—as if Li Ying were calibrating his puppet.
The choreography’s sharp synchronization stripped away any trace of humanity.
Everyone moved like cogs in a machine.
They returned to a triangular formation, the second chorus hitting in full force with a unified group dance.
But this time, there was a shift—
The movements grew fiercer, and the music kept rising in intensity.
The others followed with sharp, pounding popping, evolving into urban-style floorwork.
But Yue Zhaolin was different.
“Untamed gear joints, thread knots reborn in ashes.”
The soul’s struggle spilled forth.
The strings behind him snapped.
His body unfurled from a curl, awareness awakening, hands clasped together.
A three-stage backbend, each lower than the last.
His hair, pulled downward by gravity, revealed a pale, sweat-slicked forehead. Gray pupils stared straight into the camera—unfocused.
The light strips on his joints shifted from flickering crimson to silver-white, then extinguished entirely.
No one was singing anymore—only the sound of snapping threads and puppet joints hitting the ground remained.
Until his spine pressed against the floor.
Then he curled up again, utterly still.
Awakening, rebellion, freedom, death.
He was like a bird plunging headlong toward its fated, self-destructive end—fierce and resolute.
The curtain fell.