Ch51 - Girlfriend's Cat

After the second episode of ‘Birth of an Idol’ had aired, Lu Xu had unsurprisingly made the hot search due to reaching A-rank twice.

The other trainees had relied on their own fanbases and naturally had quite some attention, but if one were to really discuss it, Lan Gaojie was this episode’s biggest dark horse.

The first time Lan Gaojie appeared in the public’s eyes was because of the popularity voting. At that time, no one had taken notice of this person. Their reaction to his rush to first place was that he was cheating votes.

Before the second episode had aired, searching his name would automatically bring up results such as ‘Lan Gaojie swiping votes’, ‘Who is Lan Gaojie’, ‘Lan Gaojie cheating’, etc. His reputation was clearly not very good.

But after watching his second evaluation, many netizens changed their views of him—

[@Open Prairie Wild Wolf: I can be considered a previous black fan; at that time, I only thought that Lan Gaojie looked very average and boring, without any special features. Getting first in the votes was really unexpected. But after watching his performance, I suddenly realised that these abilities and stage performance skills are really too amazing. I even want to vote for him]

[@That Head of Lettuce: To be honest, you can’t speak of Lan Gaojie as a nobody. He participated in BTT’s selection training and trained with Song Zhe and the others’ company for two years. He should have abilities]

[@Flowers Bloom On The Other Shore: No way, if Lan Gaojie’s abilities are this strong how come he didn’t make it into BTT?! I feel like he dances even better than the BTT members. Was there something underhanded going on back then that barred him from joining the group?]

[@Lan Family’s Little Cutie: Some things are better left unsaid, as long as people understand it. This world is oftentimes just that unfair. Good thing gold will still shine through. Although he went around in a circle, our treasured Jie is back on track with the others. There’s no need for everyone to cling to the past. As long as you focus on your own family and give some more encouragement to our treasure Jie, then it’s fine!]

…

“What the hell!” After Han Tianyu washed his face and applied a mask, he scrolled through his phone and saw Lan Gaojie’s fans talking badly about BTT. He sprung up from his chair. “What underhanded? What unfair? It was obvious his abilities weren’t good enough at that time that he couldn’t even complete the basic courses, so the company didn’t renew his contract.”

Xu Haoming was also angry. “Right, they make it seem like we bullied him. Haven’t they gotten it wrong? If we had such a strong background then we’d directly debut as solo artists. What’s the point of forming a little group, and getting wrongful blame for it?”

“That’s enough. It’s true that he improved. If you don’t want to be used as a comparison, then we just have to work harder and use our own abilities to talk, right?” As the captain, Song Zhe had always been a stabilising existence, but every time he saw the hot search, his mood wasn’t very good either.

Furthermore, up until today, he had been a close second behind Lu Xu, suppressing Lan Gaojie by quite a bit.

But Lan Gaojie’s fans had cried out that there were black dealings going on, making even Song Zhe want to roll his eyes.

The only person who remained calm in the entire dorm was Lu Xu. A professional grim reaper didn’t care about anything other than his own work.

The more Xu Haoming looked at Weibo, the angrier he became. Finally, he decided he might as well put his phone aside. “Xu ge, you have to help us push him down. The outside world thinks he’s a pitiful little cabbage, but you’ve seen how two-faced he is towards us!”

In the splitting up of the groups for competition, both Lan Gaojie and them were in ability teams, so they wouldn’t have a chance to compete against each other.

Coincidentally, Lu Xu was in the opponent’s team. He immediately became the entirety of dorm 201’s hope.

“Yes Xu ge, good luck!” When speaking of this, Han Tianyu couldn’t help but worry a bit for Lu Xu. ”I see that his group has prepared quite well. I heard he wants to use ‘Pink Summer Dream’ to speak to young women’s hearts. That’s so annoying. Back then, he chose it after hearing that you liked pink. He’s clearly trying to steal your things on purpose.”

Compared to Lu Xu’s choice of ‘Monster’, ‘Pink Summer Dream’ was obviously much easier to create a performance for.

Han Tianyu’s practice room was very close to Lan Gaojie’s. Even if he didn’t observe him on purpose, he could see that they had made decent preparations.

Lu Xu’s team was called ‘Little Effort Team’, while Lan Gaojie’s team was called ‘Ability Assault Force.’ Speaking of it like this, it was obvious it was meant to oppose the meaning of Lu Xu’s team name.

Even the BTT members couldn’t bear to see this, but Lu Xu’s behaviour remained calm.

Han Tianyu was originally worried that because Lu Xu’s chosen song was difficult to carry out, he wouldn’t have the confidence to challenge him, but thinking of Lu Xu’s previous performance, he felt some expectation—perhaps Lu Xu was so calm because he hadn’t seen Lan Gaojie as competition at all.

If it really was like this, then this performance was 100% worth looking forward to.

Out of curiosity, Han Tianyu tried asking Lu Xu what his preparations were. But Lu Xu insisted that it would be more surprising to watch the performance when the time came. This made him feel unclear as to whether Lu Xu was confident or not in his own performance.

Xu Haoming stopped scrolling through Weibo and looked around the dorm. He suddenly realised that there seemed to be something important missing from the room.

Seeing the stacked boxes of canned cat food, Xu Haoming immediately asked Lu Xu, “Xu ge, where’s my Ba Mei?” He didn’t wait for Lu Xu’s answer as he already had an answer in his heart. “No way, don’t tell me Ba Mei went over to Nian ge?”

“That’s right.” Lu Xu also remembered that Ba Mei really did like Ji Xiunian.

Going there meant someone would feed and wait on it, finding a temporary meal ticket was pretty good.

Just as he said that, that Ji Xiunian sent Lu Xu two messages along with an attached video——

[Ji Xiunian: Ba Mei is eating the canned food]

[Ji Xiunian: It’s late. Ba Mei seems to want to stay with me tonight]

In the video, Ba Mei had eaten its fill and was comfortably curled up on Ji Xiunian’s lap, its little days seeming very exquisite.

The old father Lu Xu shook his head, not really minding——

[SS-Lu Xu: Ba Mei really treats whoever has food as its father. If Nian ge doesn’t think it’s troublesome, then you can let it stay]

Ji Xiunian liked Ba Mei so much; how could he think it was troublesome?

He replied to Lu Xu with a goodnight, and then couldn’t resist taking out his phone to take a picture of Ba Mei to send to his friend group.

[Ji Xiunian: Cute and adorable. (Photo)… (Photo)]

In a series of a 9-grid, each picture was of Ba Mei.

As the Film Emperor, after sending a message to his friend group in the previous second, in the next second there were dozens of likes and comments.

[Director Zhou: Eh? Xiunian, you have a cat?]

[Xingyao Culture & Art Director: My gosh, what a cute little kitty. Want to hug!]

[Fan Zeng: @Director Zhou This Xiunian stole someone else’s cat hahaha]

[Director Zhou: @Fan Zeng Whose cat? His girlfriend’s?]

[Actor Yin Suqiu: @Director Zhou Hahaha, Nian ge got a girlfriend?]

[Fan Zeng: @Director Zhou No no, it’s a trainee from our show, Lu Xu’s cat. Where did the girlfriend come from?]

[Fan Zeng: @Actor Yin Suqiu It’s not a girlfriend, just a little friend. Lu Xu is a didi]

…

His social circle wasn’t that large to begin with, and Ji Xiunian hadn’t said anything yet. This group of common friends were just chatting on their own.

And no one knew who it was that had taken a screenshot of Director Zhou talking about a “girlfriend”, saying Ji Xiunian was taking care of his girlfriend’s cat.

The gossip was initially between friends, but somehow it had spread to Weibo, and had turned into an exposé on Ji Xiunian’s romantic relationship.

It had to be known that in the ten years since Ji Xiunian had debuted, he hadn’t had any relationship scandals. To suddenly be suspected of having a girlfriend, the netizens felt like they were about to go insane.

As an extremely popular actor, once the #JiXiuNianRomance# topic appeared, it shot to the number one spot in the hot searches, and even had the “Hot” tag beside it.

When the netizens saw this topic, they were immediately shocked. A lot of people hadn’t even seen the evidence before they had eagerly posted on Weibo in order to hop on the bandwagon.

[@One Fist One Little Friend: Aaa, the male god actually went behind my back and got into a relationship. I feel like I’ve fallen out of love, my house is collapsing]

[@Bald Girl Jumping Online: Crying. I really want to know which woman stole away my Nian ge. I really can’t take it cries]

[@Colourful Small Hairpin: Aiya, I’m not shading certain fans. This Film Emperor is already 27, isn’t it normal for adults to get into relationships?]

[@Nian Ge’s Formal Wife: So someone tell me, who on earth is my sister-in-law?]

…

When clicking on the very first trending blog post, it was the blogger swearing that they had irrefutable proof of Ji Xiunian’s display of affection within his friend group. There was even a screenshot of his friend group attached.

The crying fans that originally thought he had really fallen in love held their stomachs and laughed out loud in the end when they clicked on the post——

[@Empress Loli Little Cute Sister: Hahahahaha it’s even the girlfriend’s cat. This marketing is poisonous, just wants to make us laugh to death]

[@Twist Twist Soak Soak: I even wondered which wild cat hooked away my ge, in the end, it was just Ba Mei hahaha @Lu Xu V Little Xu, hurry and come online. Someone said you’re Nian ge’s girlfriend eh!]