Page 29

The third day was for free practice, and the fourth was the class assessment.

There was still over an hour until the full-group lesson at one that afternoon, so most people chose to catch up on sleep or eat.

Lai Yudong was one of the few exceptions.

After they were dismissed, he headed straight for the dorm. Unlike the trainees going back to sleep, he was going to get something.

To ensure fairness, the demonstration video could only be played in classrooms and practice rooms. Copying it onto an electronic device that the production team allowed them to bring, such as the smart MP3 player he had found in his suitcase, to watch in private would result in immediate disqualification from the filming five days later if discovered.

If this clumsy bird wanted to get an early start, he would have to find another way.

He ran through the assessment rules in his head. Classes would be reassigned in three days, and the fancams and MV would be filmed in five, which meant the first three days were the most crucial.

He had to outwork everyone with the mindset that one minute less of practice meant one year less of life.

Liang Zhisheng trudged down the seventh-floor corridor. After just one day of torment, he was already thinking about withdrawing.

If his damn company hadn't insisted on sending him here to meet its KPIs, under the pretty pretext of building his popularity, he would have just gotten up and been preparing to head to the dance studio to work on a dance practice vlog he planned to release later. Instead, he had slept less than five hours, gone into filming on an empty stomach, and now had only a few days to master a theme song of moderate-to-high difficulty.

There was no helping it. He had signed with the company and had to follow its arrangements, and signing the show's contract had left him even less room to back out.

Unless he wanted to experience the wonderful life of spending the rest of his days paying off a hefty breach-of-contract penalty.

Liang Zhisheng wasn't a proper trainee. His actual job was as a full-time video blogger.

After finishing grad school that year, he had felt lost and hadn't known what to do. Self-media happened to be thriving, and he had studied street dance for a few years, so he casually filmed a few idol stage dance covers. To his surprise, they became modestly popular.

He figured that since he had nothing else to do, he might as well see if he could grow his account.

So Liang Zhisheng gradually uploaded new dance covers and daily vlogs, and in his spare time he livestreamed, chatting and singing. In just a few months, his follower count broke the hundred-thousand mark.

He wasn't hugely famous, but reaching that many followers on his own was already quite impressive.

A new challenge followed.

Once an account had gained a little traction, making a living in the fiercely competitive world of self-media—and earning enough to eat his fill at every meal—usually required a few things: frequent updates, creative gimmicks, and marketing skills. That way, he could at least have either a large following or a loyal one.

The problem was that Liang Zhisheng had no team. He handled everything himself, from choosing topics and planning to practicing, filming, editing, and livestreaming. Updating faster would lower the quality of his videos, it was hard to innovate with stage dance covers, and marketing was even further out of the question.

After much consideration, he signed with an MCN agency.

The good news was that he could update more efficiently, his followers grew steadily, and everything was progressing smoothly.

The bad news was that the company sent him to a boy-group survival show on the grounds that he looked good and could sing and dance.

"Do your best, and try to come back with a few hundred thousand more followers."

"It's fine if you don't debut. The important thing is building your popularity."

"Don't waste such a good opportunity for exposure."

Those were the company's exact words.

Liang Zhisheng understood what the company was trying to do. Throwing a small-time blogger like him, whose abilities were average to moderately good across the board, in among trainees blooming like a hundred flowers was like tossing a pebble into the sea: it would raise a barely visible ripple.

Rather than disappear without a trace, he might as well give it his all while the crowd had yet to disperse.

But Liang Zhisheng didn't want to take part in such a fiercely competitive survival show. On top of working himself half to death, he would have to face scheming and backstabbing. Who knew how many demons and monsters lurked among the 101 trainees?

At the thought, he couldn't help sighing. If the company's arrangements hadn't been difficult to defy, he never would have signed up.

If he slacked off, he was afraid of losing followers and damaging his reputation with the general public.

If he didn't slack off, he would waste energy for no good reason.

In the end, he turned in a passing-grade performance on the initial stage.

After getting himself in a better mood, Liang Zhisheng pushed open the door to room 707 and saw his seemingly unsociable roommate crouching in front of a suitcase by the bed. A conspicuous white "F" was printed on his black class uniform.

"Oh, you're here, You Shu."

At the sound of his voice, the pale blond-haired young man named Miura Yuki turned his head and looked up at Liang Zhisheng. A few seconds later, he returned a faint smile, his cool, sharp eyes curving with it like a glacier melting in early spring.

Liang Zhisheng kicked off his sneakers and climbed the ladder to the top bunk. "I didn't see you this morning. Did you go get breakfast?"

"Mm."

Liang Zhisheng looked down at his bed, which was no different from a pigsty. The blanket he hadn't had time to straighten when he hurried out of bed was bunched up with the clothes he had changed out of, like a stuffed rice ball.

From what he remembered seeing when he came in, the blanket and clothes on the bottom bunk had both been neatly folded and placed at the head of the bed.

He's so disciplined. I can't compare.

Liang Zhisheng had a good impression of this roommate. Otherwise, he wouldn't have competed with Liu Qichu for him.

Miura Yuki had been the first to lead the applause for Xu An's initial stage, and the song he chose for his additional performance was one of Xu An's lesser-known songs. He also got along well with the slightly noisy Liu Qichu. He didn't talk much, but he was always willing to help when asked.

All those details confirmed that he was a very good-natured person, unlike his aloof appearance.

To be honest, Liang Zhisheng had a fixed set of criteria for choosing roommates: those who didn't scheme against others, didn't like stirring up trouble, weren't overly lively, and were easy to get along with took priority.

As a Class C trainee in the third batch to choose a dorm, he had visited every room before finally choosing room 707, where Xu An and Li Xu were staying.

As for Xu An, there was nothing to say. He was undoubtedly the ideal roommate.

Li Xu didn't seem to meet the requirements at first glance, but at heart he was a straightforward, outspoken person with a strong sense of justice. Most importantly, he definitely wouldn't resort to underhanded tactics, so he barely passed the screening.

They needed one more person to fill the room.

Liang Zhisheng was terribly afraid that one mouse dropping would spoil the whole pot of porridge. Class F had plenty of all sorts of unsavory characters. Take that classic exchange after they got off the bus, for example: he had clearly seen that the trainee making snide remarks was wearing a Class F sticker. But it had been too dark for him to make out the person's face, and he had only caught a rough glimpse that the name had two characters.