By the time Gu Tang returned to the practice room, everyone else was already there.
“You went outside to buy yogurt?” Xu Piaopiao saw what she was carrying. “No wonder you came back so late. Next time, don’t go buying it if I’m not there. It’s still raining outside.”
Gu Tang shrugged. “I already bought it, so just shut up. What’s wrong with having yogurt to drink?”
The girls in the Superpowered Girl group, aside from Gu Tang and the others, included Jiujiu and two girls who were ranked lower. The atmosphere within the group was quite harmonious.
Yin Fan bought two bottles of yogurt.
Gu Tang was extremely serious as she handed the other bottle of yogurt to Jiujiu. “You must savor it slowly.”
This was the yogurt personally bought by her idol. She hoped Jiujiu would know how to cherish it.
Jiujiu looked completely bewildered, having no idea how valuable this bottle of yogurt was.
Chen Xing, who had come to teach them today, seemed barely able to contain his excitement. After explaining the song and dance routine to everyone, he gave them a restrained but obvious reminder. “Training is usually very tiring, so everyone can go out and get some extra rest today. Take a walk outside. You might even happen to run into someone who can come and help us, you know?”
“There are special guests,” Xu Piaopiao whispered.
“Actually, I happened to see them when I went out to buy something this morning,” Gu Tang replied quietly, having no intention of hiding it. “Song Mo and Yin Fan.”
Xu Piaopiao’s eyes widened. Then, as if she had thought of something, she said, “Then He Linzhun must be there too. That makes three groups and three people, one for each group.”
Gu Tang immediately understood what Xu Piaopiao meant.
The three important male characters in Hidden Gun were Song Mo, He Linzhun, and Yin Fan. It seemed the program crew had collaborated with the drama production team.
The news about the special guests made everyone excited, and their enthusiasm for learning was even higher than usual. They were all afraid that the guests hiding somewhere would think they were holding the group back.
The training rooms were close to one another, so they could hear the footsteps of the trainees in the neighboring rooms after they had dispersed for their break.
The other groups had already begun resting. That meant they had a head start when it came to running into the guests.
“Teacher Chen, let’s take a break too,” one of the girls in the group pleaded. “If we get out late, we won’t be able to get a guest!”
“Exactly, exactly! What if all the guests are taken by the time we get out?” Jiujiu strongly agreed.
Clearly, compared with competing for first place, this group was more interested in finding out where the fun was.
Chen Xing had already seen through the restless hearts of this bunch. He smiled. “I can see you’ve worked hard. Let’s take a twenty-minute break first.”
“Teacher Chen is the best!” A wave of cheers erupted.
“Let’s split up and search,” Jiujiu suggested. “That way, we’ll have a higher chance of finding a guest.”
Everyone agreed with the plan.
“We need to look somewhere ordinary people wouldn’t normally go,” Xu Piaopiao guessed. “I’m planning to search around the back courtyard. Maybe they deliberately didn’t hide inside the building.”
“It’s still raining outside, so it probably won’t be the back courtyard,” Gu Tang blinked. “The program crew is really going all out just to keep us from finding them.”
“We absolutely can’t overlook any place,” Xu Piaopiao said. “Where are you going to search?”
Xu Piaopiao asked the question with a serious expression, and Gu Tang answered just as seriously.
“The men’s restroom.”
Xu Piaopiao fell silent for a moment.
“You’re even more ruthless than I am.” She was thoroughly convinced of her defeat.
Gu Tang felt that she was truly a genius. There was only one men’s restroom in the entire building, and it was on the second floor. As long as she stayed behind the sofa in the corridor outside the restroom, she would eventually run into her target.
The live broadcast of Dream Girl Group had originally received a fairly lukewarm response. However, the moment three mysterious guests appeared on screen, the number of clicks began to rise exponentially, while the previously sparse barrage of comments suddenly surged.
Gu Tang crouched behind the sofa, firmly determined to keep watch. The viewers in the live broadcast, however, were far less calm.
【What kind of genius move is this?】
【666, this girl is seriously a little genius】
【No, no, no! Our Song Mo is an immortal who doesn’t need to use the restroom!!!】
【Wait, I know why she looks so hilarious now! She’s the one who acted in that idiot commercial!】
Gu Tang hid in the shadows and watched alertly.
One minute, five minutes, ten minutes passed…
Forget her target, not even a single person came to use the restroom.
Gu Tang’s anticipation gradually turned into anxiety, and then, from anxiety, eventually returned to calm.
Sure enough, waiting here for someone to use the restroom was not very realistic. Gu Tang had no choice but to give up on the idea and planned to go downstairs to see whether Xu Piaopiao’s plan had succeeded.
As she walked down from the bend in the corridor, where there were fewer people around, Gu Tang heard footsteps other than her own.
She looked up and saw a man wearing a fox mask.
The red-and-white mask covered his entire face, making it difficult to tell who he was. But… at the very least, she could confirm that he was a man!
Gu Tang immediately dashed upstairs.
The masked man, hearing the commotion, started running as well.
Who would have thought that although a man wearing a mask could run fast, Gu Tang could run even faster?
Although Gu Tang had no advantage in height or leg length, her stride frequency was faster. She charged forward lightly and swiftly, like a little deer going pitter-patter up the stairs.
Yin Fan, who was wearing the mask, discovered yet another thing about Gu Tang. Whether she was sitting on the sofa or charging toward someone while running, her attack power was extraordinarily strong.
However, before he had time to react, Gu Tang had already grabbed his arm tightly. The strength of a women’s shot-put champion forced Yin Fan to slow down and turn around to face her.
In front of Song Mo, Gu Tang had fallen in such a delicate and helpless manner. In front of Yin Fan, however, she stopped herself with astonishing stability. The momentum that should have sent her crashing straight into his arms was forcibly restrained by her sheer strength.
Yin Fan: …
Gu Tang flashed a huge smile. “Caught you!”
Her smile was excessively bright, so bright that Yin Fan instinctively pressed his mask more firmly against his face.
There was no benefit to having Gu Tang in the same group as him. Besides, judging from the expression she had shown toward Song Mo that day, this smile might mean that she had mistaken him for someone else.
“Maybe you should try looking for someone else,” Yin Fan said in a lowered voice. He knew Gu Tang could recognize his voice.
“Looking for who?” Gu Tang’s expression did not change, nor did her grip on his arm loosen, as though she were afraid he would escape again.
“I came here specifically to find you.”
She said it with absolute certainty.
The fingers pressing against his mask loosened.
Finding his movements too slow, Gu Tang rose onto her tiptoes and snatched away his mask.
When she saw the face beneath it, Gu Tang’s smile gradually spread across her face, and the joy she could no longer suppress was unmistakable.
Yin Fan blinked. Once the mask was off, he unexpectedly looked a little at a loss for a moment.
“Yin Fan!” Gu Tang’s eyes were filled with sparkling anticipation. “The dance we’re doing is Superpower Girl. It’s the kind where we wear fluffy tutus. Come dance with us!”
The smile on Yin Fan’s face froze, followed by a brief silence.
Gu Tang continued looking at him, her whole body radiating a cheerful energy that seemed to say, “Come on, dance with us, dance with us!”
“Give me that mask,” Yin Fan said, taking the mask back from Gu Tang and putting it on again. “Let’s just pretend you never saw me.”
Gu Tang: ???
Both of them had kept their voices low at first, so the first audible part of the video was when Gu Tang invited Yin Fan to dance.
The barrage of comments also began flooding the screen at that moment.
【AWSL! I could watch the part where she stands on tiptoe to take off his mask 1,000,000+ times! What kind of Japanese shoujo manga plot is this?!】
【These two faces have me completely ojrk. Can some video-editing master please make a compilation?!】
【I was actually there at the time. I am the mask itself, and I can prove that the two of them are dating.】
Author’s Note:
Little Theater:
Gu Tang, seriously: “It’s mainly because Yin Fan is highly capable. It’s definitely not because I want to see him dance a girly dance.”
Xu Piaopiao: “I think so too, but it would be even better if he wore a pink tutu.”
Chen Xing: “Someone as professional as Yin Fan, I think he would do it. Yin Fan, wouldn’t you agree?”
Yin Fan: …