Chapter 1

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

Lin Ye was just seventeen, grilling squid by the roadside, when he was recruited by a talent scout. That person bought fifty yuan worth of grilled squid skewers and touched his shoulder when Lin Ye was getting the chili powder. Lin Ye thought this was a crazy person, who ran out from a mental hospital to harass people on the streets, and almost poured the whole bottle of chili powder on the man’s face.

The man ducked left and right. The chili powder landed on his brand-new suit but he did not show any frustration or anger. Instead, he smiled and asked Lin Ye, “Did you learn how to dance before?”

Lin Ye said that he had learned dancing before.

When he was young and his parents were still around, the family did not lack food or clothes. The elders at home wished for their son to succeed in life, so Lin Ye learned a bit of everything before. Piano, guitar, drawing, dancing, he had learned all of these for some years. He only stopped when his parents passed away in a car accident a few years ago.

The talent scout held the fifty yuan squid skewers and ate it at the roadside until the sky turned dark. Lin Ye was cleaning up his store before he approached Lin Ye and asked, “Are you very short on money?”

Lin Ye lived with his old grandmother. Although he was not very short on money, they did not have enough for him to continue studying. The recruiter liked his face and his dancing skills. The talent scout opened his mouth and started to embellish things, saying that the trainees would be able to debut, to become idols, and it was possible to earn millions per month. Lin Ye had yet to truly step into society and was naive, and went along with the recruiter not fully understanding the situation.

He spent two years as a trainee.

Lin Ye received the minimum wage and scrimped and saved to send money to his grandmother. Furthermore, he only had the chance to return home during the Chinese New Year. Lin Ye slowly understood that rather than wasting his time here, he was better off continuing his roadside stall back home. At least then, he would be able to return home to have a meal with his grandmother after he finished cleaning up the store every night.

The company’s contract would end at the end of the year. When there were three months left for the end of the year, Lin Ye’s grandmother was sent to the hospital because she fell ill. Lin Ye asked for leave from the company, and the company saw that he had the intention of quitting and refused to talk about the contract’s end date. They even pitched another contract at him, “If you sign this, I’ll give you three months of leave right now.”

Lin Ye did not respond.

The higher-up then said, “Isn’t there someone in your family who’s staying in the hospital because of an illness? If you lack money, you can borrow some from the company.”

When Lin Ye heard that, he signed the new contract without hesitation.

When he carried his luggage into the hospital room, he even happily told his granny, “After I go on the show next year, I can return home and spend time with you.”

Who would have known that the old lady was unable to even live past the year, she was not even able to endure the harsh winter.

After Lin Ye settled the old lady’s funeral arrangements, he covered everything in the house with a cloth to prevent dust from settling and carried his luggage back to the company.

After New Year’s Day, the company sent him and three other people to the small island where the show was going to be filmed.

When they arrived, the hostel rooms were sorted by which companies the trainees came from. Lin Ye stayed with people from his company, and two people from another company.

This was a talent show where they would pick eleven people from a hundred. Only eleven people, from the one hundred, could form a group and debut. The decision of whether one stayed or left was in the hands of the fans. Talent and camera time were both equally important. On the first day they were on the island, the five roommates and the people staying in the room next door excitedly went to the canteen to have an ‘accidental meeting’ with the mentors. Only Lin Ye was lying on the upper bunk and sleeping.

He did not want to advance and he did not want to debut. He only wanted to return home quickly. He had promised his grandmother that he would go back and accompany her.

Xia Dongchan, who was Lin Ye’s roommate for two years in the agency, helped him to get food from the canteen. On the way back, the five of them had been pulled into another dorm room to play Werewolf. Xia Dongchan could not leave and called him to tell him the dorm room number and ask Lin Ye to come over to pick up the food himself.

(T/N: Werewolf is a pretty popular game in China… It’s a little complicated to explain, but you can just take it as a group game!)

Lin Ye played with his phone on the bed for a little while before he got up, opened the door, and went out. He used what he remembered to find his way across the hall. In the end, he stopped by a room opposite his own.

When he raised his gaze, he saw someone was sitting on the sofa, holding his head in his hands. Another person was bending his knees and kneeling between the first person’s legs, his two hands resting on the first person’s shoulders. The person kneeling was tilting his head to move closer to the first person’s face, but the person sitting down caught the jaw of the kneeling man in his hand, stopping him mid-movement.

He had seen these sorts of scenes in the company’s dorms so often that he was not shocked.

Lin Ye apologized calmly. When he went to close the door and leave, he saw the person who was sitting down push the person who was kneeling away, then raise his head to take a look at Lin Ye. He lifted his beautiful and sharp jaw, “You’re not up to my standards. The one by the door can be considered to be barely up to my standards.”

The person kneeling looked at Lin Ye when he heard those words, the affection in his eyes had disappeared and all that was left was obvious hostility.

Lin Ye was shocked, a slightly uncomfortable feeling in his heart. However, he did not want to make trouble for no reason. He took a step back and was going to walk away, but the heel of his foot stepped on the tip of the shoe of a person behind him.

He turned his head and only then did he see there was a man with his arms crossed over his chest standing outside the doorway, smiling and quietly watching the drama unfold.

Lin Ye turned his body and walked around the onlooker, heading outside. All the handsome faces that he had seen since he had come to the island intertwined and flashed through his mind. Finally, they stopped at the face of the man who was sitting on the sofa inside, with his raised chin and those eyes that gazed at him.

The next second, his phone started to ring.

Lin Ye picked up the phone and quickened his steps as he heard Xia Dongchan asking, “Have you arrived yet?”. He quickly forgot about the incident that had just occurred, and that person.

****