Chapter 53: The Second Performance (8)
Su Junzhe understood how to create show effects.
Fans had already flocked to the Bloody team’s practice room on purpose, and the entire screen was filled with birthday wishes in the bullet comments. Now that he suddenly suggested doing something extra, it not only stirred up the gossip-loving audience, but also drew in fans of other contestants.
The bullet comments were lively, and Lai Yudong’s mood was equally lively.
According to their team’s rules, anyone who was late had to dance the theme song in the hallway of their dormitory floor—once for every minute late.
Which meant he would have to dance twice on the seventh floor.
His silence was deafening.
Unexpected yet reasonable, the rest of the team actually welcomed this little prank from the birthday boy. Their expressions looked unwilling, but their mouths were quick to ask when the punishment would be carried out.
To be fair, this kind of segment was incredibly embarrassing—but since the audience loved a bit of fun, it could very well turn into a “classic moment.”
No wonder he was already in the upper ranks—his sense of showmanship was sharp. Lai Yudong was still a bit green.
“Let’s save it for later. Everyone’s busy practicing now, and the dorm building doesn’t have many people around,” Su Junzhe clapped his hands cheerfully. “We’ll do it after the second performance recording! Just two more days!”
Lai Yudong: “……”
Good grief, he even had to pick a day when there’d be more people.
After singing the birthday song, blowing out the candles, and making a wish, the final step was dividing up the cake. For once, the production team was generous—they paid out of pocket for a twelve-inch cake.
But since everyone had just eaten breakfast, and all of them followed a strict low-sugar, low-fat diet, six people simply couldn’t finish it. They had to carry the cake and knock on the doors of the two neighboring practice rooms. With the help of the Stolen Fire and Riddle dance teams, the cake was finally cleared out.
And with that, the birthday surprise came to an end, and Su Junzhe returned to his group.
Even though Su Junzhe repeatedly emphasized that he was already fine, no one felt at ease letting him continue practicing. Afraid this “Grind King” wouldn’t know how to sit still, Zhang Mingche assigned him the role of supervisor—basically equivalent to a dance instructor.
One person couldn’t out-argue five, so he had no choice but to pout and agree.
“Mo Li, move half a step more to the left, it’s too empty over there.”
“Yuki didn’t keep up—your hand went up just a little too slow.”
“Captain Zhang, you’re twenty-five years old now, show some mature presence.”
…
Su Junzhe stood there like a human microphone stand, chattering nonstop. But every word hit the nail on the head—he was an out-and-out perfectionist, picking apart every disharmony as if armed with a magnifying glass.
Group practice lasted until the afternoon.
The Bloody team received notice from the production staff to go record their track. Since the dance teams were only evaluated on dancing, their second performance stage didn’t require live singing, but they still had to use a song recorded with their own voices.
Today was for recording, tomorrow was rehearsal, the day after tomorrow was the official stage.
Oh—and the day after that, the hallway theme song.
Their schedule was packed to the brim.
…
Unknowingly, the second performance day arrived.
Even before the show began, the venue inside and out was crowded with spectators. Most were fans there for their own chosen contestants, while the proportion of casual onlookers had dropped sharply.
Compared to the first performance—where only top-ranked contestants and returning trainees had the luxury of official support clubs—the fan support for the second performance had skyrocketed. Many individual fans had found their groups, and the light signs in team colors gathered together, making it much easier to see the differences in popularity at a glance through the spread of colors.
In the backstage dressing room, Lai Yudong, already finished with hair and makeup, looked into the mirror, feeling rather unaccustomed to the image staring back at him.
For the sake of stage effect, stage makeup was, without exception, heavy. This often led to male idols being criticized online as being overly made-up and lacking masculinity. But it was unavoidable—first, the camera required stronger makeup; second, it had to match the stage lighting; third, with the industry booming, all sorts of “monsters and demons” wanted a slice of the pie, and light makeup would only make one look dull and lifeless.
On this point, Lai Yudong was quite accepting. In fact, he had thought his first performance styling was a bit too plain.
Later, Li Xu had secretly shown him a cut of the stage performance, and the final effect looked fresh and clean without being ordinary, which put his worries to rest.
That was a side note.
But the styling for the second performance went slightly beyond his expectations.
In the mirror, a boy with pale blond hair looked back with a cold expression. Black eyeliner sharpened the upward tilt of his eyes, while brown-red and burgundy eyeshadow blended together in layers. Dark red contact lenses deepened the dangerous aura, making the faint sense of aloofness carry a hint of that obsessive, unhinged quality usually only seen in manga characters.
In addition, thick fake blood was smeared across his left cheek, and a pair of fangs peeked faintly between his lips, making him look like a real vampire had stepped into the mortal world.
Objectively speaking, the styling was stunning.
Lai Yudong could clearly feel how his rising popularity had boosted the quality of his styling treatment as well—down to detailed props like the fangs. But he had never seen himself in such a style before; it was even more shocking than the first time he woke up in this world to find his hair dyed blond.
To the point that he wanted to ask the mirror: Who are you?
“Ta-da! Caught a Yuki!”
Before the person appeared, his voice arrived. A selfie stick with a GoPro popped right under Lai Yudong’s eyelids, and in the mirror’s reflection a curly-haired boy with a dazzling smile suddenly leaned in, crouching down so the two of their heads pressed together in front of the lens.
“Quick interview—how are you feeling right now?”
The intruder was none other than Su Junzhe.
The production team arranged for certain high-popularity contestants to film daily vlogs. This time, it was Su Junzhe’s turn—his ranking had recently skyrocketed to third place—and the theme was “behind-the-scenes of the second performance stage.”
He had just come over from Mo Li’s side, looking very much like he planned to interview every member of the Bloody team one by one.
“I kind of don’t recognize myself,” Lai Yudong voiced his honest feeling.
“Really? But I think this look suits you so well. Your features and aura fit this style perfectly—like an elegant, self-possessed vampire male lead straight out of a manga. You look really handsome!” Su Junzhe showered him with compliments smoothly and skillfully.
Lai Yudong faintly sensed that Su Junzhe was reciting a set of pre-prepared lines without much emotion. Rather than genuine praise, it felt more like him dutifully doing his job.
He responded with a polite smile: “Thank you.”
“What about me? How do you think my look is today?”
Su Junzhe naturally slid into the next topic. He poked his own cheek with an index finger, playing up the cuteness of someone younger than he actually was—something his slightly babyish features allowed him to pull off without seeming awkward.
Lai Yudong gave him a once-over.
The boy with chocolate-brown hair smiled with crescent-shaped eyes, dark red stage blood smeared near the corner of his lips, making his skin look even paler—like a pampered little vampire noble.
Lai Yudong commented: “Very cute. Like you just secretly ate a messy chocolate bun.”
Su Junzhe: “?”
Why wasn’t this guy following the usual script of exchanging rainbow-flavored flattery?
There was still some time before the performance began. After a few more pleasantries, Su Junzhe moved on with his selfie stick in search of the next target, while Lai Yudong took the capsule of fake blood handed to him by the makeup artist and headed for the backstage lounge.
One after another, the trainees finished their styling and took their seats according to their groups. Before long, every seat was filled.
The second performance officially began, and the live cameras in the viewing area switched on.
[Is it starting?]
[Aaaa I finally squeezed in from the outside camera feeds!]
[Me refreshing like crazy is so pathetic]
[First thing on screen and Bloody already K.O.’d me (faints)]
[My “One Wave Three Zhe” are sitting together!]
[Took me a while to realize One Wave Three Zhe means Su-Yu]
[Yuki/ Yuki/ Yuki/]
The bullet comments poured in like a dam bursting.
Fans who had been waiting eagerly—both solo stans and CP fans—fired off the pre-written posts they had prepared, spamming them for maximum visibility. The flood of messages left Lai Yudong dizzy.
Meanwhile, the host Fu Hanyu stepped onto the stage to announce the voting rules for this round.
There were one thousand Starseekers in the audience. Since the second performance was a position evaluation, voting was conducted within each position group. Contestants from the same position would compete, and each group could choose one trainee to support—unlike the first performance, where you could only pick between two groups before voting for an individual.
The trainee with the highest votes within their group would receive bonus votes, and the top trainee across all groups of the same position would receive an additional bonus.
Even with the new rules, vote-splitting was still an issue—if anything, even more so.
Votes weren’t just split within groups, but also across groups of the same position. Fans would sometimes deliberately withhold their votes from strong contestants in other groups just to prevent them from snatching the position’s top bonus.
It had become a test of which contestant had the most devoted solo fans at the venue.
The first to take the stage was the rap position. From a performance standpoint, rap was good for heating up the atmosphere, and since there were only two rap groups, putting them at the beginning or the end made the most sense.
“I heard the rap group had a rough time. They were still rewriting lyrics the day before rehearsal.” Su Junzhe, sitting on the left, put away his GoPro and focused on watching while casually chatting with his teammates.
“I’ve heard a little about that.” Lai Yudong sighed.
The guys in their dorm who were in the rap groups had practically been driven insane.
Li Xu in particular—he had stayed up all night writing new lyrics, only for the mentors to reject them again at last night’s rehearsal. Back in the dorm, desperate and at his wits’ end, he had even asked him for advice on how to write rap lyrics.
Lai Yudong was deeply worried about Li Xu’s mental state. Just how pressured did he have to be to go as far as asking a foreign contestant for help with Chinese rap lyrics?
What’s more, Lai Yudong’s understanding of rap was probably even less than his understanding of dance.
But he couldn’t bear to sit back and do nothing while his roommate was in distress. With a heavy conscience, he took the risk of exposing himself and offered some clumsy suggestions—mostly tiny tweaks, like changing a few words, or adjusting the word order.
—The meager writing skills of a broadcasting student.
Lai Yudong forcefully comforted himself. Foreigners learning another language often paid closer attention to grammar than native speakers did. If he had to explain it, that reasoning could hold up, so it shouldn’t be too suspicious.
After all, their dorm only had one fixed camera; the audience wouldn’t be able to tell exactly what the two of them were working on anyway.
At long last, after countless struggles, Li Xu finally finished his final version in the early hours of this morning.
Hopefully, he had already memorized the new lyrics—that was what worried Lai Yudong the most.
“The two rap groups’ songs are really different in style.” On Lai Yudong’s right, Bai Xuanhe leaned back lazily in his chair. His nonchalant posture looked less like a vampire and more like a down-to-earth college student moonlighting at a haunted house.
“Different is putting it mildly.” Zhang Mingche picked up the thread, though he didn’t elaborate further.
The reason was obvious—even to a complete newbie like Lai Yudong.
Listen was a hype track. Silent Night was a sentimental ballad. Which style would work better on a live stage was self-explanatory.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call one a song of ascension, the other a song of farewell.
That was why top-ranked rappers like Yin Zizhen and Yu Yizhen had all swarmed into the Listen team like hungry wolves. The fact that the lowest-ranked member of that group was Li Xu—who was still as high as 37th place—said it all.
Those who ended up in the Silent Night group fell into only two categories:
first, people like Chu Tianyi, who specialized in melodic rap and wouldn’t be restricted by song style;
second, the unlucky ones like Liang Zhisheng, whose rankings were too low to have a choice.
At first, Lai Yudong only sensed that the rap group’s song distribution seemed unreasonable, but he didn’t know why the production team would do it. Surely, it wasn’t because the staff themselves hadn’t realized the problem.
Later, when he brought it up with Li Xu, Li Xu offered a very realistic reason:
“A seven-member debut group doesn’t need that many rap positions.”
And then, with a subtle undertone, he added:
“A seven-member group doesn’t need that many visuals either—especially not ones chosen by the public.”
After saying that, he gave Lai Yudong a “good luck” kind of look.
Although Li Xu hadn’t spelled it out, Lai Yudong felt he had understood the meaning.
For the seven debut spots, either Qu Xincheng would make it in alone, or Qu Xincheng and he would both make it in together.
There was no third possibility.
In other words, if he wanted to debut, his final ranking had to be higher than Qu Xincheng’s.
Maybe this was just some conspiracy theory Li Xu had picked up while secretly surfing fan forums, or maybe it was the harsh truth of capital games behind the scenes. As for which one it was, Lai Yudong had no way of knowing.
All he could do was his best—and leave the rest to fate.
When the ranking updates came and Qu Xincheng overtook him, then it would be time to start worrying.
Cute Su Junzhe