Chapter 20
Song Ran kept swallowing. She couldn’t even stand properly, her legs trembling so badly that she had to keep shifting from side to side just to barely stay steady.
Xu Xiaoye held her arm and comforted her. “Don’t be nervous. Just pretend everyone in the audience is a potato. They’re only audience members anyway; they don’t get a say in the scoring. We see the evaluator teachers all the time, and they’re easy to get along with. Don’t be nervous. This isn’t even an elimination round. Just think of it as turning in homework, a reporting performance. Relax a little.”
Song Ran kept muttering, “I’m not nervous, I’m not nervous…”
Furiously giving herself psychological suggestions, though no one knew whether they were actually working.
An Rong took out a chocolate and handed it to her. “Have some. This is still from Little Hua.”
Xia Chunhua was also busy hypnotizing herself and giving herself mental pep talks, so her reaction came several beats late. It wasn’t until Song Ran had already stuffed the chocolate into her mouth that Xia Chunhua suddenly realized what An Rong had called her. She immediately turned toward An Rong unhappily and pouted. “What do you mean, Little Hua? Call me Sister.”
With their performance about to begin, An Rong decided to indulge her for once and obediently called, “Sister Xiaohua.”
Although she was still being called Xiaohua, at least An Rong had reluctantly added Sister. Xia Chunhua was satisfied. After all, this was the first time anyone had called her Sister. She was delighted.
They could hear the host speaking from the front of the stage. The moment their group was mentioned, someone came over to remind them, “Xu Xiaoye’s group, right? You’re up.”
The girls encouraged one another and walked onto the stage side by side. The nervousness they had felt backstage, their hearts pounding like drums, all vanished the moment they stood beneath the lights. Light poured down from above while everything around them disappeared into darkness, as though the entire world had been reduced to this one place. Everyone’s gaze was fixed here. Every dance movement, every note, had been carved into their muscles and nerves through two weeks of intense training. No one needed to remind them. Their bodies reacted automatically.
It wasn’t until the music ended and the lighting changed that the girls came out of that strange, almost mystical state. Song Ran was so excited she nearly cried, her eyes turning red. Kang Yu was about the same. Xia Chunhua lifted her smiling face happily. Xu Xiaoye secretly breathed a sigh of relief. An Rong, meanwhile, looked as though nothing had happened at all. She remained calm and only pressed her lips together in a small smile.
Applause rose in a wave from below the stage. The three evaluators seated directly in front also looked pleased. Their comments were almost entirely praise, with An Rong receiving particular attention. Her stage presence and technique, including her awareness of the camera and ability to deal with unexpected situations, seemed almost innate. Compared with half a month ago, she had completely transformed. It wasn’t merely a dramatic improvement—it was almost as though she had become a different person.
The moment they left the stage, Song Ran could no longer stop her tears. She hugged Xu Xiaoye and sobbed into her shoulder, startling the other people waiting to go onstage, who thought something had gone wrong.
Xu Xiaoye patted her shoulder comfortingly. “It’s okay now. See? Didn’t everything go smoothly? There weren’t any mistakes.”
Song Ran shook her head, smearing tears onto Xu Xiaoye’s shoulder as she choked out, “I’m sorry. I did one move wrong.”
At the time, she had nearly panicked so badly that she didn’t know where to put her hands or feet and even froze for a moment. But only a second later, An Rong, who had been beside her, turned, quickly shifted into position behind her, covered her microphone, squeezed Song Ran’s hand, and whispered rapidly, “Don’t panic. Keep going.”
Xu Xiaoye had been facing forward with her back to them and hadn’t seen any of it, so she looked up at An Rong in surprise.
An Rong removed her microphone, then collected Kang Yu’s and Xia Chunhua’s as well. Calmly, she said, “It’s fine. It didn’t affect the overall performance. Didn’t the teachers praise you for improving a lot too? You need to believe in yourself. It wasn’t a big problem.”
Song Ran was pitiful, yes, but… wasn’t this supposed to be the part where Xu Xiaoye hugged her, encouraged her, and praised her? Why did the storyline feel wrong? Had the protagonist been replaced? An Rong indirectly reminded them, “They’re asking for the microphones over there.”
Only then did Song Ran let go. She turned around and hugged An Rong instead, thanking her.
An Rong was caught completely off guard by the hug. She froze for a moment but didn’t push her away. Instead, over Song Ran’s shoulder, she smiled at Xu Xiaoye.
Although their own performance was over, none of them left. They squeezed into the backstage area and listened to what was happening out front. When it was Wang Yunshui’s group’s turn, the segment was noticeably longer.
From backstage, they could hear Shen Ri’an asking, “Is your ankle better? It’s really impressive that you managed to finish the whole dance today.”
Xia Chunhua curled her lip. An Rong noticed and smiled, brushing a finger lightly over the back of Xia Chunhua’s hand to signal her not to make it so obvious. There were too many people and too many eyes backstage right now, and there were cameras too. If someone maliciously edited the footage afterward, there would be no explaining it.
Almost everyone in the dorm knew that Wang Yunshui had pretended to twist her ankle. The main problem wasn’t just that her acting had been unconvincing. Relying on post-production editing to cover for her, she had performed the whole thing with blatant carelessness.
But clearly, both the publicity department and the directing team planned to use the sprained-ankle incident as something they could hype up. Wang Yunshui cooperated perfectly too, deliberately filming plenty of extra footage from yesterday through today.
But since she had to pretend her ankle was injured, she obviously couldn’t dance the same way she had during rehearsals. So yesterday, they had changed the choreography at the last minute. She became the lead vocalist and only performed simple movements, while the other four were reduced to supporting roles. She was the captain, and the company had tacitly approved the promotional angle, so the four teammates had no choice but to cooperate.
With the choreography changed at the last minute, the stage effect naturally wasn’t as good as expected. But Wang Yunshui herself got plenty of screen time. When she came out, she proudly lifted her chin, looking smug and self-satisfied. When she passed Xu Xiaoye, she even gave her a look from head to toe, full of contempt and disdain.
Xu Xiaoye smiled good-naturedly and said, “Congratulations.”
With so many people watching, Xu Xiaoye’s attitude was excellent, so Wang Yunshui couldn’t exactly lose her temper. But she still remembered how Xu Xiaoye had spoken back to her last time and had been stewing over it ever since. Now that she had finally found an opportunity to mock her, she had to hold herself back because there were too many people around. Her expression was ugly as she gave a fake smile and said, “Captain Xu did pretty well too. After grinding away for three years, you finally managed to become a captain. Keep it up.”
“What captain or not? We’re all members of the same team. I don’t care about that kind of thing. Mm… does your ankle still hurt? Maybe you should go rest first.”
Xu Xiaoye pushed back neither lightly nor heavily. She didn’t humiliate Wang Yunshui, but inwardly she still couldn’t help sighing. She genuinely hadn’t wanted to go up against Wang Yunshui at all. The interpersonal relationships inside TS were complicated, and they might truly end up in the same group later. There was no need to make things too ugly; otherwise, getting along and working together in the future would become difficult.
She was willing to back down.
But that depended on what Wang Yunshui actually intended to do.
After all four groups finished performing, the entire process had taken about half an hour. It was still early, and everyone felt varying degrees of unease and curiosity. They wanted to know what exactly was written on the evaluators’ score sheets, roughly how many points they had gotten, and whether they were in danger.
After all the audience members had left, someone suddenly came over and told all of them to return to the studio.
Everyone was confused. They asked what was going on, but the person only said they didn’t know. Left with no choice, they entered in nervous groups. The three evaluator teachers were still seated below the stage, while everyone crowded together in a row onstage.
Qin Yun once again took on the role of host. She was fairly satisfied with everyone’s performances today, so her expression wasn’t unpleasant. There was even the faintest smile on her face. But what she said wasn’t nearly as pleasing.
“Everyone performed well and has improved a great deal. This round of evaluation is officially over. I believe that after these two weeks, you’re all already very familiar with one another. So for the next evaluation, you’ll be choosing new teammates.”
Like a stone thrown into still water, her words caused an immediate uproar. The stage was silent for only an instant before uneasy whispers broke out.
“Choose again? How?”
“I don’t want to choose again. I think our current group is already great. Why do we have to regroup?”
“If we’re picking again, choose me. Your score is high, so you’ll definitely pick before me. Choose me, choose me, choose me.”
“Fine. If you’re ahead of me, then you choose me.”
Qin Yun lowered a hand, and the whispered discussion onstage gradually stopped.
The corners of Qin Yun’s mouth lifted slightly. Looking at this group of uneasy, still-green young girls, she spoke in a softer, slightly lighter voice. “Are you wondering why we’re regrouping? It’s simple. Of the twenty of you, only five will eventually be chosen to debut as a group. We still don’t know who those five people will be. Right now, none of you are part of a fixed lineup. We need to break up the groups and reorganize them to see whether different combinations of people create different chemistry.”
Ultimately, there was only one goal.
Choose the best five people.
Shen Ri’an and Zhou Rui sat off to the side watching the show. They left this kind of “bad news” to Qin Yun. After all, the girls all seemed afraid of her anyway.
Qin Yun looked down at the paper on the table and said, “Would the four students who ranked lowest in the previous elimination round please step forward.”
No one seemed to have expected the selection process to work like this. There was a small disturbance onstage.
An Rong stepped forward. Song Ran came out too and stood on her right. Once the last- and second-to-last-ranked contestants had come forward, the remaining two followed and instinctively lined themselves up according to rank.
Among the several nervous, shrinking girls, An Rong suddenly looked exceptionally calm and completely out of place.
Qin Yun smiled habitually and said, “Then let’s begin. Starting with Song Ran. You are now the captains. Choose the teammates you want.”
Even Song Ran hadn’t expected that she would suddenly become someone with priority in choosing teammates. She hesitated, then asked hopefully, “Can I choose one of my previous teammates?”
Her meaning was obvious.
She wanted Xu Xiaoye.
After all, she and Xu Xiaoye stood at opposite extremes of the ranking, yet both now had priority selection rights. Their situation was different from everyone else’s.
Qin Yun turned her head. Shen Ri’an made an “OK” gesture. Zhou Rui frowned but still nodded.
Those were the rules they had set.
No matter what unusual situations arose, the rules had to be followed.
Song Ran got exactly what she wanted and happily said, “I choose Xu Xiaoye.”
Then it was An Rong’s turn.
Calm and without hesitation, An Rong said, “Xiao Yu.”
Both Xu Xiaoye and Xiao Yu turned to look at her.
The girl ranked third from the bottom seemed terrified that someone might steal her preferred choice. The instant An Rong finished speaking, she immediately blurted out, “Yang Pei.”
That left the fourth-from-bottom girl. But after hesitating for a while, she didn’t call Wang Yunshui’s name. She chose someone else.
Now, among the original top four, Wang Yunshui was the only one left standing alone.
No one had chosen her.
Everyone knew why.
And precisely because everyone knew, the atmosphere instantly became bizarrely silent. No one even dared whisper anymore.
There had only been sixteen people available to choose from in the first place.
Three rounds of selections passed, and Wang Yunshui still hadn’t been chosen.
Everyone held their breath.
Even the other three captains selecting people began to panic a little, their eyes darting around as they silently prayed that someone else would choose Wang Yunshui first.
Otherwise, if no one wanted her until the very end, she would simply be assigned to whichever team picked last.
An Rong didn’t care either way.
This kind of great deity was far too much for her little temple to contain.
Even if her team ended up one person short, she still wouldn’t choose Wang Yunshui.
Standing in the middle of the stage, Wang Yunshui’s face had turned iron-blue.
She gritted her teeth and endured it.
She had waited this long only to somehow become a hot potato that no one wanted!
Just as the atmosphere grew increasingly tense, Wang Yunshui suddenly turned around without saying a word and walked away.
Her footsteps struck the stage floor loudly, leaving everyone with the sight of her furious back, as though she had suffered some enormous humiliation.
The door behind them was slammed shut.
Bang!
The sound carried all the way into the studio.
The girl ranked third from the bottom instantly flinched, her face turning pale.
She had originally been on Wang Yunshui’s team. Seeing how happily Song Ran had chosen Xu Xiaoye again had already made her nervous, but she had still gritted her teeth and refused to choose Wang Yunshui.
Now Wang Yunshui had stormed off, and so many people were looking at her that it almost felt as though she had been the one to drive Wang Yunshui away.
Author’s Note:
An Rong: Heh!
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