609 was almost as tormented as Zhou Xingyu. It watched with its own eyes as the primary male lead tried to lean in to kiss the drunk host, and then watched another male lead cast a look of unrequited yearning toward the host.
Its central processing unit was practically short circuiting from anxiety, and it still could not figure out why both of them had developed such plot defying feelings for its innocent host.
Therefore, when Yunyu woke up, he was greeted by the system frantically urging him to stay away from the main characters, convinced that they were all scoundrels trying to take advantage of him while he was drunk.
He almost felt pity for this naive system, yet he still agreed with its reasoning without hesitation.
“I know. Thank you for your concern.”
“You are awake. Is anywhere hurting?”
Mo Yunyu turned his head slightly toward the direction of the voice. Seeing that it was Zhou Xingyu, he sat up in a daze and asked, “Why am I already back? Were we not…”
Zhou Xingyu handed over a cup of warm water, his gaze filled with concern, as if he wanted nothing more than to feed Mo Yunyu himself.
“Do you not remember? You were drunk.”
Drunk? Almost instantly, Mo Yunyu thought of that box of chocolates, but his memory was completely frozen at the moment he ate the chocolates in the car; everything after that had vanished from his mind as if wiped clean.
Realizing that a mere three liqueur chocolates had managed to make him drunk and even caused a blackout, Mo Yunyu could not help looking a bit unnatural.
Observing the shift in the other’s expression, Zhou Xingyu’s gaze dimmed slightly.
Does he remember? Does he remember that the brother in law in his mouth almost kissed him? Was he willing?
“Did Brother Yan have you bring me back? I drank too much and do not remember.” Mo Yunyu lied to cover up the fact that he got drunk at the very touch of alcohol.
He does not remember?
Zhou Xingyu’s mood brightened up again in an instant. “I carried you back. You have been sleeping all afternoon. Does your head hurt?”
Mo Yunyu shook his head, tightly covering up the fact that his alcohol tolerance was abysmally poor, and brushed the matter aside.
After that day, Yunyu poured all his energy into rehearsals. However, during this period, the number of people currying favor with him was countless. Even though Zhou Xingyu blocked many of them overtly and covertly, people still kept crowding around him.
Regarding this, Mo Yunyu merely furrowed his brows slightly, simply categorizing them as people trying to suck up to him because he was rich and powerful, remaining completely oblivious to the fact that those were affectionate romantic advances.
Zhou Xingyu, who stayed right by Mo Yunyu’s side the entire time, watched all of this unfold. He could not help feeling a bit perplexed: did Mo Yunyu look down on these cheap affections, or was he just completely dense and unable to sense other people liking him?
Yet rehearsals were far too busy, compounded by having to intercept people who tried to wedge themselves next to Mo Yunyu at every opportunity, leaving him with zero chance to verify this hypothesis.
Thus, time flew by, and the day of the second livestream quickly arrived.
The first two recorded episodes had been released in advance, pushing the hype for the new livestream to its peak. The moment it started, tens of thousands of viewers flooded in, generating an endless stream of bullet comments.
“Wife, wife, I am here!”
“Husband! You are so handsome I am drooling!”
“What? Why is someone calling him wife?”
“It is finally the live performance! I have been looking forward to it for two weeks!”
“Who gets it? I finished watching the recorded episodes and did not sleep all night just waiting for today’s livestream!”
“I am so looking forward to it!”
Orange was as gorgeous as ever, hosting flawlessly.
“Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s live broadcast of Shining Stars!”
The audience off stage was even more numerous than last time, and their cheers almost blew the roof off the entire studio.
“Everyone is exceptionally enthusiastic today, haha.” Orange paused for a fraction of a second. “Now, let us welcome our long awaited mentors and contestants to the stage.”
Mo Yunyu was submerged within the group. The moment he took his seat in the contestant area, several cameras swept across him.
“I am sure everyone on stage has put a lot of effort into today’s performance, but I must announce the competition format for this match.”
“We currently have sixty contestants, divided into six groups from A to F, with ten people per group. The rule for today’s show is elimination by the bottom rank, eliminating the lowest ranking two members from each group.”
As soon as these words dropped, all the contestants wore expressions of shock or worry. They had all assumed it would be a group based elimination, never expecting it to be an intra group bottom rank elimination.
In other words, their opponents would be the teammates they had spent day and night with over the past two weeks.
Without a doubt, it was the cruelest format possible.
“Contestants do not need to worry even if you are eliminated. You can participate in the later revival round, where mentors will vote to decide whether you can stay on this stage.”
Orange tilted her head and smiled. “Without further ado, let us invite a representative from each of our six groups to draw the performance order.”
The person who went for Mo Yunyu’s group was naturally their team leader, and they drew the number 4.
Although near the end, it was still a decent position.
Seemingly mindful of the broadcast duration, the performances began immediately after the draw.
The performances of the first two groups were mediocre at best, with no major mistakes but also very few highlights.
However, the third group’s performance barely started when someone made a positioning error and crashed straight into a teammate. From that mistake onward, the stage performance derailed like a runaway train, never returning to the right path. It could only be described as a chaotic mess of demons dancing; their singing was an absolute disaster, and their dancing styles were all over the place.
The three mentors in the judges’ seats were covering their eyes, unable to bear watching any longer, yet they still forced themselves to critique and eliminate the worst two.
“Now, let us invite Group E to the stage.” Returning to the stage, Orange still bore traces of suppressed laughter, but she steadied her voice to introduce the next group.
Yunyu closed his tired eyes. He felt as though his psyche had been assaulted, yet he still had to go back up and perform another round.
As they walked onto the stage, Zhou Xingyu gave Mo Yunyu a seamless, subtle supporting hand, which was precisely captured by the nearby camera.
The song they had chosen sounded like a sweet love song about a couple who had been deeply in love for years, so the styling and makeup for their entire group leaned toward a youthful and fresh aesthetic.
“Time to cleanse my eyes…”
“Such a youthful and vibrant group, it feels like a bunch of handsome college students!”
“This group should not be like the last one, right?”
“My baby is really so pretty and cute!”
“The Xingyun CP, I am shipping this raw and dying on this hill!”
After all, with the previous group’s severe blunder, the members standing on stage could clearly hear the chaotic chatter from the audience. Their psychological pressure inevitably grew a notch higher, but as the stage lights dimmed, they forced themselves to calm down and tried their absolute best to deliver their peak performance.
The familiar background music kicked in. Having polished their routine for a full week, the team’s formations avoided any of the low level mistakes made by the previous group.
The person assigned to the first segment was Zhou Xingyu. With his superior vocal timbre, the moment he sang his first line, he captured everyone’s ears.
Regardless of how poor the singing skills of the subsequent members might be, they tried their utmost to maintain vocal stability amidst their dance choreography.
The performance was gradually hitting its stride, right up until Mo Yunyu slid into the center position. His lips parted, and his opening notes were an instant knockout, not to mention the wink he naturally flashed when the camera locked onto him, which practically made people’s bodies tingle with numbness.
It was not until he stepped back from the center and the camera shifted to someone else that the audience snapped back to reality and erupted into cheers.
All the teammates knew that this young master was no mere pretty vase with no substance, but possessed genuine talent. However, they had not expected the audience’s reaction to be this explosive. In a momentary panic, one of the teammates stepped out of position, and Mo Yunyu happened to be stepping backward at that exact moment.
Seeing the two about to collide, Zhou Xingyu gently took Mo Yunyu’s hand, smoothly steered him around the other person, and seamlessly transformed the formation into a duet stance.
The audience’s cheers were relentless, one wave crashing right after another. Under the high definition cameras, both possessed exceptionally superior features, bringing their CP chemistry to the absolute peak as they drew slightly close, not to mention that moment which played out like a couples’ dance.
For a moment, all surrounding figures became blurred, leaving everyone’s eyes fixed solely on those two striking and dazzling individuals.
Regrettably, the performance was still ongoing. Mo Yunyu pulled his hand back and returned to the position where he was supposed to stop, narrowly and safely completing the routine.
“Little Treasure’s singing is seriously exploding with goodness!”
“Why did they hold hands near the end? I am directly hoisting the CP flag!”
“This group is so much better than the previous one. Thank you guys for cleansing my eyes.”
“Was that hand holding part at the end a mistake?”
“Such a perfect moment was actually a mistake?”
Orange, who had watched the whole thing from the side, stepped back onto the stage. “Thank you all for the wonderful performance. Mentors, please give your critiques.”
Teacher Yin pushed up the glasses on his nose, his opening remark departing from his usual vicious critique. “You are the best performing group so far.”
As soon as these words were spoken, the audience broke out into another round of cheers and applause.
“However, there are still quite a few flaws.” The sharp critique arrived right on schedule.
“I will not even mention the soft, limp singing, but why did someone repeat the exact same mistake and walk into the wrong formation? Luckily a certain contestant pulled them back, otherwise they would have been the second pair to crash into each other today.”
The pointed contestant apologized and bowed repeatedly, while Teacher Yin simply waved his hand and motioned for Mia to start her review.
“Actually, apart from that minor slip up, everywhere else was performed remarkably well. And in my view, that mistake was not even a mistake; it can be called the finishing touch.”
When it was Shi Jingchi’s turn, he unusually fell silent for a few seconds before starting his critique. “Luckily someone pulled him back, otherwise this performance would have had an oversight that was hard to ignore.”
“It is just that with so many ways to resolve it, why would anyone choose to hold the other person’s hand on stage?”
He said this with a smile, mostly sounding like a joke, delivered casually as if bantering among ordinary friends.
Sure enough, as soon as these words dropped, the audience burst into laughter.
Only Zhou Xingyu could tell that the other man spoke with hidden jealousy.
Targeting him, and targeting the hand that had held Mo Yunyu’s.
What are you thinking about?
Mo Yunyu held a piece of cake, looking curiously at Zhou Xingyu.
The livestream had already ended quite a while ago. To celebrate this viewership rating that exceeded expectations and to bid farewell to the eliminated contestants, the production team had specially prepared a small party tonight.
Hearing Mo Yunyu’s words, Zhou Xingyu fell silent for a moment. The two of them happened to be standing in an uncrowded spot, and sensing this was a prime opportunity, he deliberated through several thoughts before asking the question that had lingered in his mind for a long time.
“Do you think other people’s attitude toward you has anything particularly unusual?”
Mo Yunyu had just stuffed a bite of cake into his mouth, working hard to chew and swallow it before waving his little fork to reply, “Is it not just because they want to suck up to me? But there are tons of people trying to suck up to me. Who do they think they are?”
“What if they like you?” Zhou Xingyu looked at Mo Yunyu’s nonchalant expression, his internal perplexity growing larger by the second.
“Like?” Mentioning this word made Mo Yunyu display an expression of wanting to avoid it like the plague. “Approaching me under the banner of liking me is just to get things that benefit them out of me. It is no different from brown nosing.”
Zhou Xingyu fell silent once more.
Mo Yunyu, earnestly eating his cake, naturally failed to notice just how obscure and unfathomable the gaze directed at him by the person beside him was.
Mo Yunyu had never possessed much of an inclination to care about others; when in a good mood, asking a casual question already counted as his absolute limit. Seeing that Zhou Xingyu clearly lacked enthusiasm, he simply went back to focusing on the small cake in his hands.
Shi Jingchi, who had been busy for ages, finally shook off the entanglement of surrounding people. Scanning the hall in a circle, he finally spotted Mo Yunyu in the corner.
His eyes lit up, and he picked up two glasses of wine as he walked toward Mo Yunyu.
“Care for a drink together?” After approaching, Shi Jingchi realized that the other person was eating cake with a look of utter satisfaction, while Zhou Xingyu stood nearby like an invisible entity.
To be honest, Mo Yunyu, who had always lived within the protective custody of his older sister, had virtually zero exposure to alcohol, aside from that box last time which made him make a fool of himself in front of Brother Yan.
Looking at the gorgeously colored liquid in the wine glass handed over by a mentor, Mo Yunyu hesitated for barely a second before accepting it.
He certainly would not admit that he was just curious about what this alcohol tasted like.