Chapter 2

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The next day, they were recording the first ranking assessment.

When Lin Ye and his three teammates reached the seats in front of the stage and started to sit down, someone stood up and called out to him, smiling, “Barely-didi, do you want to sit next to me?”

(T/N: “didi” means little brother, and it’s a cute way of addressing our main character. You’ll notice throughout the novel, there will be the addition of the “didi” suffix. I left it as “didi” to make some parts sound less strange~)

Lin Ye remembered this was the person standing behind him and watching the drama unfold when he had walked into the wrong room yesterday.

He also remembered the words “barely up to my standards”.

He did not really want to sit there but his teammates sat down quickly.

Lin Ye could only follow them and sit down. Following this, Xia Dongchan pulled Lin Ye over to whisper in his ear, “How do you know Ming Rang?”

Lin Ye said, “When I went looking for you to get my food yesterday afternoon, I walked into the wrong dorm room.”

Xia Dongchan showed an expression of understanding, his gaze turning to the person beside Ming Rang, “It seems that he came here with Jiang Lian.”

Lin Ye followed the direction of his eyes and took a peek before he could match the face to the name.

The person who had stood behind him and watched the show was Ming Rang.

The person who said that he was ‘barely up to my standards’ was Jiang Lian.

There was still someone missing.

Lin Ye looked around, his gaze landing on the face of a pretty boy who was walking up.

Xia Dongchan followed Lin Ye’s gaze, “What’s the matter? You know him too?”

Lin Ye shook his head and said that he did not know him.

Xie Dongchan hesitated for a moment, then muttered to himself, “… That should be Li Yuan, his makeup is so thick.”

In terms of their order of appearance, their group was arranged to go on stage very late. In the multiple performance gradings, there were too many good-looking people, and there were also too many people that were quite talented. After watching the whole time, Lin Ye did not remember a single face besides the other five people in the same hostel room as him and the three people he had met yesterday when he had pushed opened the wrong door.

When Jiang Lian and Ming Rang went off stage, Xia Dongchan was exclaiming loudly next to him, “Both ‘A’s, the two of them are completely alphas.”

(T/N: The A refers to the ranking, and the ‘alphas’ was originally ‘A’ in the Chinese raw, which can be a short form for ‘alpha’ in Chinese.)

Lin Ye saved his sleeve from its current state of being crumpled by Xia Dongchan’s grasp and lazily leaned back on the chair without saying anything.

However, his gaze silently landed on Jiang Lian’s face multiple times.

When it was time for their company to go and do their warm-up, Ming Rang was still using his hands as a pillow, sitting on his seat and giving Lin Ye mischievous looks, “Barely-didi, good luck.”

Lin Ye politely forced out a smile. Jiang Lian, who rarely spoke, opened his mouth, his voice was very light, but sounded very good, “Don’t jinx them. You will cause them to have bad luck instead, if you say such things.”

(T/N: It’s the idea that if you say things out, the opposite will happen. So after Ming Rang wished them luck, Jiang Lian is saying that since he said that, the opposite will happen and Lin Ye and the rest are ‘jinxed’)

With Ming Rang’s words that jinxed them and Jiang Lian’s added debuff, their final results were indeed unsatisfactory.

His three roommates all got B, but when it came to Lin Ye, he dropped two ranks and became D.

Ming Rang, who was sitting in the audience, smiled and opened his mouth to ask, “Shen-PD, did you read it wrongly? After all, the pronunciation of the letter B and the letter D is very similar. When I was in school, I had my brother tell me the answer in the examination hall, but I would often not be able to hear clearly and kept mixing B and D up.”

(T/N: So PD here is how people refer to the Production Director, who is the representative of all the youth producers (The audience that does the voting).)

People in the audience seats started to laugh, and even the mentors were laughing.

Only then did Ming Rang wave his hand and say, “Don’t record this, don’t record this. It might lead the fans astray after it is aired.”

Shen-PD coughed lightly, going back to the topic at hand, and called out Lin Ye on the spot, “Where’s your attitude? I couldn’t see your attitude from your dance.”

Lin Ye lowered his eyes, accepting Shen-PD’s teachings and not refuting anything.

Shen-PD asked, “What is your dream? What are you working towards now?”

Lin Ye thought about it and said that his dream was to be by his grandmother’s side.

“You’re the first person that I’ve heard of whose dream doesn’t involve the stage,” Shen-PD smiled very gently, “Since it’s like that, you need to work hard to be able to be by your grandmother’s side in the future and work hard to give your grandmother a better life.”

The three teammates by his side that knew the whole situation showed awkward expressions.

Lin Ye bent his waist and bowed. He thanked the PD but did not say that he would work hard.

After the first assessment ended, everyone returned to their hostel rooms to change into their class uniforms.

The group of directors posted in the WeChat group that there would be someone coming over to confiscate their phones in half an hour. The six people in Lin Ye’s hostel room sat on their beds and chatted. The red number on the WeChat group’s profile picture kept increasing, but no one noticed.

(T/N: The last sentence means that there were a lot of messages being sent in the WeChat group.)

Yang Xu, who was in the same hostel as Lin Ye but was from a different company sat by the bed and asked Lin Ye, “Were you forced to come here?”

Lin Ye said, “Were you?”

Yang Xu did not instantly reply and just turned his head to look towards the corner, “The camera shouldn’t be switched on yet, right?”

Lin Ye thought about it, “They will inform us beforehand before they switch on the cameras.”

Only then did Yang Xu nod his head, his expression bitter as he said, “I was, I didn’t want to come here and suffer at all. My company forced me to come. They said that they were unable to find anyone else. I just want to leave here soon and eat hotpot and kebabs.”

Xia Dongchan interrupted coldly, “But during the grading just now, PD praised you and said that you were the one with the best attitude and that you’re the one that is most willing to improve in your group.”

That person did not speak anymore, lowering his head to touch his phone, pretending that he did not hear what Xia Dongchan said.

Lin Ye leaned back onto Xia Dongchan’s bunk bed, opening his mouth as he said without care, “I want to be eliminated quickly and return home as soon as possible.”

Their room door was suddenly pushed open by someone and Jiang Lian took a step into their room, saying coldly, “If you want to go home, you don’t necessarily need to wait till you are eliminated. You can choose to leave the competition directly.”

Thinking about how he still owed his company money, Lin Ye did not say anything.

Jiang Lian walked towards him first, extending his hand and showing his palm, “Hand it over.”

Lin Ye turned over and sat up on the bed, raising his head in confusion, “What?”

On the other side, Ming Rang had already stopped in front of the others, “I’m sorry, fellow brothers, the director had us come and collect your phones. I’ll have to trouble everyone to cooperate with us.”

Seeing that Lin Ye did not move and continued to sit cross-legged, Xia Dongchan hurriedly put his phone into Jiang Lian’s hand.

Jiang Lian took the phone, turning his head to pass it to the staff member next to him. After that, he lowered his head again to look at Lin Ye who was on the bed.

Lin Ye was still feeling uncomfortable from the words that Jiang Lian had just said and was clearly not very willing to cooperate. He stretched his legs and patted some parts of his body in a perfunctory manner, then raised his gaze and opened his lips as he looked towards Jiang Lian, “I can’t remember where I put my phone right now.”

Jiang Lian glanced at the bulging shape at his jeans pocket and laughed mockingly.

Lin Ye was stunned by his laugh.

When he returned to his senses, Jiang Lian had already leaned over, raising his leg to kneel between Lin Ye’s two legs, reaching his hand out to reach into Lin Ye’s jeans pocket.

The warmth of his hands penetrated the skin-tight material and reached the skin on Lin Ye’s thighs, quickly causing him to have goosebumps.

A broad palm moved around, touching his thigh. Lin Ye felt like there was a randomly moving rabbit in the pockets of his pants.

The next second, the rabbit in his pocket made its way into his chest.

All the scenes he had seen yesterday appeared in his head again. Lin Ye quickly raised his gaze, as if he had burnt his eyelids. By then, Jiang Lian had already backed away, Lin Ye’s phone held between his fingertips.

The rabbit in his chest deflated rapidly like a punctured balloon.

Lin Ye turned his gaze away and did not say a word.

The staff member behind Jiang Lian was too busy. Jiang Lian turned around and took an empty envelope from the table by the side, putting the phone inside. After that, he bent down and helped Lin Ye write his name on the envelope.

Lin Ye looked over carelessly, surprised that Jiang Lian knew his name.

His handwriting was beautiful and forceful, causing Lin Ye to be unable to look away.

However, Ming Rang turned his head to remind Jiang Lian, “I think you wrote his name wrongly.”

Only then did Lin Ye realize that Jiang Lian had written the wrong ‘Ye’. The surprised feeling in his heart completely disappeared. Lin Ye stood up from the bed and walked over, “It’s not this Ye.”

(T/N: The Chinese language has many different characters, and some share the same pronunciation but mean different things, in this part, Jiang Lian wrote a character that sounds the same as the ‘Ye’ of Lin Ye, but was not the correct one. For reference: 椰(actual character), 耶(character written by Jiang Lian))

Jiang Lian passed the pen to him, “You can write it yourself.”

Lin Ye took the pen that had some left-over warmth from Jiang Lian’s hand and grasped it. He looked at the words on the envelope but did not know how to change them. There was no other reason, it was simply because Lin Ye’s handwriting was ugly.

The aura he had when he refused to hand over his phone completely vanished at this moment. Lin Ye stood next to Jiang Lian. For some reason, he felt an unexplainable embarrassment at the thought of writing next to the words Jiang Lian had written while Jiang Lian was watching.

He held the pen and raised his head, looking at Jiang Lian as he said, “How about you write it.”

Jiang Lian took a step closer, reaching out to hold the half of the pen that was not held by Lin Ye, his voice sounding by Lin Ye’s ear, “How do I write it?”

Lin Ye instinctively turned his head to the side, raising his hand to gently rub the tips of his ears, “Add a ‘wood’ character by the side”.

(T/N: So if you noticed earlier, the difference between the two characters is just a 木, which, as a lone character, means ‘wood’)

Jiang Lian nodded his head and said mildly, “Let go.”

When Lin Ye heard those words, he turned his head over to ask, slightly dazed, “What?”

“The pen,” Jiang Lian laughed mockingly again, his gaze landing on Lin Ye’s hand that was still holding the pen, “Is the reason you’re not letting go because you want me to hold your hand and write it?”

Lin Ye was stunned, his gaze gliding past Jiang Lian’s lips that had a smile on it. After that, Lin Ye’s expression remained unchanged as he let go of his hand and took a step back.

In his hurry, the back of his hand touched Jiang Lian’s wrist.

Lin Ye turned to face away from Lin Ye, then, he raised his other hand to pat the back of his hand, as if he had just touched a source of infection.