Because of one person's momentary whim, Kiriwake Yayoi and Chu Yuanqing had embraced in the rain. The photos of them sharing an umbrella quickly spread across the fan communities of both sides, as well as their related Weibo supertopics.
Thanks to her outstanding performance onstage and her A-Class rating, Kiriwake Yayoi had claimed her share of the traffic. Her nationality and tragic past had also made her a magnet for controversy and discussion.
Chu Yuanqing was the first contestant to perform. A few frames of her smiling with her head raised amid a shower of colorful confetti were clipped by netizens and became iconic images that spread across the internet. She then took the stage first, too, and her composed debut performance under pressure gave everyone plenty to talk about.
At this stage, the two were roughly on the same level in popularity. Promoting them as a CP was mutually beneficial, so neither side's fans were likely to accuse the other of leeching off their favorite.
So when fans from both sides followed the developing story, they could do so without a care. As the discussion grew more heated, it boosted both sides' popularity like a transfusion.
Meanwhile, among the Talent Show audience, there were plenty of people who mostly kept to themselves and just liked shipping CPs. After seeing the photos and the story behind them, many were successfully drawn into the pairing and became CP fans independent of either side.
The Weibo post Xu Ling had made was shared more than three hundred times by fans of both sides within just a few hours. It quickly passed ten thousand likes, and the comments numbered in the six figures.
"Whoa, Qing Bao's that cool?"
"LMAO, why's Kiriwake Yayoi like a penguin? She even managed to bow herself into a fall. So cute."
"Damn, I wanna press my face against Qing Bao's chest too. I'm reasonably convinced this is all part of the Sakura Girl's scheme!"
"Hard to say. The blogger's got a real knack for taking pictures. She even caught Kiriwake Yayoi's face turning bright red from that distance. I can only say she captured the perfect heart-fluttering moment."
"LOL, I feel like the blogger was shipping them on the spot. How badly was her hand shaking while she took the pictures to end up with hundreds of them?"
"Shiver, shiver. I'm shipping them hard. What a treat."
"Holy crap, the CP name and supertopic are already up? I have to give the blogger credit for her efficiency. This sister's purity level is off the charts."
"Sheng Qing Tong Yin—Sheng Qing Tong Yin? The blogger's got a gift for naming things. All I can say is, hell yeah! I'm shipping them till I die."
"Damn, there's another CP fan group now? This one's called Wu Zhong Jian Qing. Nice, it even has a hint of first love and White Moonlight. I'm sold."
Xu Ling's efficiency was terrifying, but the other CP fans enthusiastically shipping them on their own, along with the fans of both contestants, were hardly slow either. Before long, the number of CP supertopic groups had climbed into double digits.
The most followed and discussed pairings were still the original Sheng Qing Tong Yin and Wu Zhong Jian Qing.
These later pairings quickly drew in a huge number of CP fans from Flash Dance's audience, almost immediately surpassing the original Shuang Chu CP.
Yes, that meant Chu Wangshu and Chu Yuanqing.
The two had a couple of things going for them: the same surname and always standing by each other.
Basically, whenever the camera was on one of them outside of their performances, the other was sure to be in the shot. It was only natural that they would have CP fans and supertopic groups.
But maybe it was because of their vibe, or maybe there was some other reason.
Strangely, hardly anyone shipped them romantically. Their CP leaned toward something you'd see on a children's TV channel.
The posts were about friendship or a mother-daughter bond, so they didn't easily spark fan wars. The shipping wasn't especially intense either. Their following was high, but discussion and Combat Power were both relatively low.
Elsewhere, nearly three hundred Flash Dance contestants had come from Sea Capital and Kyoto.
Many contestants were backed by sizable companies. When it came to the usual romantic fanservice between girl-group members, some knew the drill better than others, but they all knew that survival-show fans loved that sort of thing.
So the companies had generally prepared all kinds of strategies to build buzz and promote CPs before the competition began.
But Flash Dance's last-minute announcement of its Elimination Mechanism made many contestants with preplanned marketing campaigns withdraw from the competition. As a result, half the CP scene in Flash Dance grew wild and unchecked.
The one exception was Chen Yining, who came from Yunlan Entertainment.
Not only had she chosen to compete, she had also earned the First A-Class rating. With Yunlan Entertainment's resources building her momentum, her presence was second only to Xie Qingxuan, who had overwhelmed the Sea Capital contestants with sheer skill.
On top of that, she had competed alongside a childhood friend with considerable ability and tremendous popularity: the industry-famous Genius Choreographer, Ji Shuzhu.
Both had earned the First A-Class rating.
So it was only natural for them to promote their CP.
The audience was very receptive to that, too. After all, compared with shipping trainees whose screen time was impossible to find and who could easily be eliminated in the first round, it was less likely to feel like a waste of emotion to ship First A-Class contestants with a good chance of debuting.
This kind of strong-and-strong pairing was unlikely to end in tragedy. They had plenty of screen time and never ran short of content. It was a veritable feast served up by the heavens.
Childhood friends in particular—weren't their CPs more believable than those on other talent shows?
From the two little snowballs in their elementary school graduation photo to the two girls in their middle school graduation photo, grown tall and beginning to bloom, the years they had spent knowing each other were undeniable.
The little details that had accumulated over all those years barely needed any marketing to make people ship them till they died.
Sincerity was the ultimate weapon.
Even if they weren't actually a couple, the idea of chasing their dreams alongside a close friend was still great to ship.
What's more, judging by Chen Yining's personal account and the posts from people who had uncovered her friend circle over the years, the chance she was into girls wasn't just nonzero—it was pretty high.
Because Yunlan Entertainment had promoted the Young Lady's debut three years ago, planning to have her join what was then the hottest survival show in the country.
But Chen Yining had turned down the offer at the last minute, making the company's several million yuan in publicity costs go to waste. She had also deeply offended the Program Group that had been promoting her, and so she didn't appear in public until Flash Dance burst onto the scene.
At the time, nobody knew why.
But someone had now dug up Ji Shuzhu's schedule from back then and discovered that she had been in an accident at a music festival in Xistan Country. That very day, a certain Young Lady had announced she was withdrawing from the competition.
Well, think about that for a second.
All I can say is, Chen Yining, you really do love her.
Taking all the factors together, their pairing was currently the most popular by far, towering over everyone else and seeming impossible for later challengers to surpass.
But that didn't mean they had taken all the traffic in the CP scene.
Flash Dance was simply too big.
As a rising pairing, Kiriwake Yayoi and Chu Yuanqing lacked much content. Only their iconic rain photos had made it out of the show. But the benefits and traffic they'd gained were very real.
Besides, they had a major advantage.
Their past experiences were much more likely to resonate with the public than those of the previous pair.
If Ji Shuzhu and Chen Yining were born to stand high above the clouds, untouched by worldly dust and able to reach the sun with ease,
then Kiriwake Yayoi and Chu Yuanqing had been born in the mud, suffered all the hardships of the world, and struggled toward the light, yearning to become the moon's pursuers.
On the same day, the discussion on Weibo was still growing.
The number of posts in Kiriwake Yayoi's personal supertopic broke ten thousand overnight. Most of them were about her past.
"Waaah, Yayoi really had it rough. I'm a new fan and only skimmed through things, but her past is basically a heartbreaking tale of a bottom-tier idol being exploited by her agency, dragged down by her teammates, and crushed by reality."
"Really brutal. Nothing like anything contestants in the Chinese Entertainment Industry have to go through."
"Yeah. She passed the audition at twelve and joined as a fourth-generation member. She was active for a full seven years, and the only time she ever took leave was when she was diagnosed with a fatigue fracture after a Public Performance and had to stop performing for treatment immediately."
"The most messed-up part is, that group finally started gaining traction at the beginning of this year, and then the other members one after another got into trouble. There were tons of negative stories that got them dragged like crazy. They didn't even hold a proper graduation performance before the group was forced to disband."
"That was seven whole years of her youth, and that's how it ended. I can't accept it."
"My verdict: the shady agency can go to hell, and those garbage teammates can get lost."
That painful history was enough to make even casual observers feel for her, and plenty of them had come to the supertopic just to follow the story. They left their own little traces and sighed over what she'd been through:
"She didn't give up even after all that. How much must she love being an idol?"
"Didn't this Sakura Girl say she got cut from the Flash Dance audition in Tokyo? Something about that feels pretty suspicious."
"Maybe the person in charge thought she'd been in a group with those awful teammates, so she had baggage. Classic Island Nation thinking—can't let her cause trouble for the show."
"That's hilarious. I checked her Twitter. One day after Flash Dance aired, she still had fewer than ten thousand followers. She was barely known. The backlash was only happening in that tiny little circle—it wasn't even a speck."
"Nothing to say. Bottom-tier idols have no rights."
"Good thing she came to Great Xia. The idol the Island Nation didn't want is wanted here. Let's crush the Island Nation girl groups when she debuts and make a comeback!"
Kiriwake Yayoi herself might never have imagined that the suffering and despair she had gone through would be unearthed, noticed, and cared about by thousands upon thousands of people, all because of the brief flash of brilliance she had shown.
The dark history that the Tokyo Flash Dance staff had treated as worthless had now become the best tool for building her fans' devotion.
As the saying went, putting fans through the wringer made them more loyal.
Kiriwake Yayoi's fans had barely joined the fandom before they started digging through her past and getting their hearts broken over and over. Even passersby were bound to feel sympathy after hearing all that, and some might become fans. It went without saying how the fans themselves felt.
Empathy was inevitable.
And more importantly, the fans would feel a sense of duty to pull her out of the mud.
That almost faith-like sense of duty gave them far more drive, influence, and unity than normal fans—and, most important of all... spending power!
The CP craze Xu Ling had started by chance happened to complete the final piece of the puzzle. It helped Yayoi's fanbase grow once more, giving them enough strength to challenge contestants in higher tiers.
Meanwhile, the other half of the CP, Chu Yuanqing, reaped all the benefits.
"Waaah, thank you, Qingqing, for helping our Yayoi."
"Thinking back now, it's really scary. Flash Dance was Yayoi's only chance to return to the stage. If she'd fallen then and twisted her ankle, nobody would know her story now."
"All I can say is, Chu Yuanqing is way better than Yayoi's old garbage teammates. Some people you've never even met will reach out and help you, while others can spend six or seven years with you and still destroy the dream you shared."
"Yeah, I'd be thrilled if Yayoi and Qing Bao became good friends."
"Ship them! Ship them till they drop!"
"Aw, Chu Yuanqing must really want to debut, right? But it feels like this CP is bound to end badly eventually. Her spirit and courage can't change her current lack of skill, and the later Public Performances could easily turn into a disaster."
"Any help is better than none. candy is the most suitable song for Yayoi in the theme song, and it's also the easiest. Qing Bao can learn it too. If we can get that song to the top, we'll help them both!"
"Good point. Let's go!"
Well, for this seemingly ridiculous reason, someone who least wanted to debut was mercilessly swept into the great battle to claim the theme song.
Time passed.
The trainees at the underground base were still adjusting to Flash Dance's twisted challenges, completely unaware that their fans were risking life and limb to boost their rankings and data, hoping to get the most suitable theme song chosen for them.
Chu Yuanqing wore a relatively form-fitting dance outfit with an oversized pink T-shirt over it. Her frame was slender and her features delicate. She looked a little young for her age, tiny and adorable.
A coach guided her through some basic dance moves. Her skin, smooth as jade, had flushed a delicious light pink. A little sweat had seeped through her clothes, and her black hair clung to her temples in damp strands. Her breathing had grown slightly labored, but her lips were pressed together, revealing a stubborn determination.
This was one of the most basic kinds of flexibility training in dance, and a cornerstone of what determined a dancer's potential.
Overall, it trained flexibility and range of motion.
Only with enough flexibility could a dancer combine strength with softness and move freely, without looking stiff, making her movements elegant and pleasing to the eye.
Otherwise, her movements would look awkward and clumsy, lacking any graceful charm; she might not even be able to perform the poses correctly.
Although Chu Yuanqing's Magical Girl body had excellent natural conditions, it had only been developed for two weeks. At best, she could manage to dance at a beginner level, and her overall stats might even be worse than that.
In other words, flexibility training was essential.
Of course, a set of flexibility exercises took only twenty to thirty minutes, so it didn't take up much time over the course of an entire day.
Kiriwake Yayoi watched Chu Yuanqing work hard at her stretches, a little surprised.
To be honest, before teaching her, Yayoi had expected the worst.
Chu Yuanqing had only been learning dance for two weeks. She'd learned by watching videos and taking advantage of free trial lessons at dance studios. Calling her a complete beginner might have been giving her too much credit.
And flexibility was precisely the kind of basic skill that required years of practice. It couldn't be mastered overnight.
Yayoi had asked her to practice this mainly to test and warm her up. She also hoped it would help Chu Yuanqing form the habit of stretching every day. She hadn't expected her to manage much of it correctly.
But now that she saw her...
Chu Yuanqing was one of those exceptionally gifted people. She was well past the ideal age for learning dance, yet after only two weeks of training, she was making progress as quickly as an average person would in three months.
The most unusual thing was that she seemed to have a special instinct. Her movements never tilted into angles that could easily cause an injury, and she always used just the right amount of force. She barely needed any guidance or reminders.
With that kind of talent and learning speed, it was no wonder she'd managed to perform that routine onstage.
Let me recommend a book I wrote before, a Honkai Impact 3rd fanfic.
Synopsis: Su Qing'an wants to become someone who can give Fu Hua happiness.
And for that, even in the darkest Worldline and the most desperate future, he can endure a hell far more terrifying than anything he has faced before.
[Timeline currently covered in the book: Previous Era's Canghai City — main story's Changkong City — main story's Changkong City — Previous Era — the Yunmo period — Elysian Realm, Post-Honkai Odyssey, an IF route with a corrupted Celestial — a cyberpunk-themed anomaly zone — Anti-Entropy main story (finale and extras).]
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