Dad, Please Let Me Be a Solo Stan!

At this moment, Chu Yuanqing knew nothing of this. She was eagerly striding through the contestants' waiting area and heading outside, mentally calculating vegetable prices and considering what to make for dinner, looking every bit like a thrifty, virtuous housewife.

At the same time, at the audition venue.

A contestant was carefully checking her appearance. She had tied her raven-blue hair into a cute bun and was mentally rehearsing what she would say later.

The next moment, the announcement called number 371.

The little girl instinctively looked up and, by pure coincidence, saw Chu Yuanqing walking out in the distance. She blinked, her expression filled with doubt and confusion.

Even with only her back in view, she still recognized those familiar clothes, shoes, and socks.

Volume 1: 4. Doomsday Diva.

The sun was setting.

The apartment lights glowed faintly.

Chu Yuanqing wore an apron printed with flowers and little bears, shuffling around in tiny cartoon slippers. She held a light-blue ribbon between her lips and gathered up her abundant hair. Her slender pale fingers clumsily worked at it for quite some time before finally tying it into a ponytail that would not easily get stained by cooking fumes.

Those inexplicably cute aprons, slippers, and ribbons had all been miscellaneous items she picked up while redeeming eggs with a loyalty card before a supermarket closed down.

She had originally intended to make her daughter happy, but their stiff parent-child relationship had left them gathering dust. Only now had they finally found their proper use.

It had to be said that fate could be truly strange sometimes.

Chu Yuanqing did not think there was anything wrong with it. Before becoming a Magical Girl, she had used this very apron anyway. Its only purpose was to keep off grease and stains, so the design printed on it was hardly worth caring about.

The girl put on kitchen sleeves, heated oil in the wok, and began stir-frying with practiced ease. Halfway through, she expressionlessly rose onto her tiptoes, then used magic to float herself a little higher, pretending nothing was wrong as she reached for a seasoning bottle from above. She quietly landed back on her toes and continued cooking.

Since her daughter was staying at school, dinner was simply egg fried rice with leftovers.

After eating alone, Chu Yuanqing habitually picked up the cleaning tools and carefully cleaned the apartment, bustling about like a young wife diligent in housework.

Although the girl's expression was calm and she showed no loneliness, her petite figure and youthful face still gave the room an inexplicably pitiful, solitary atmosphere, as if she were a left-behind child from a television commercial.

"Should I keep calling Xiao Shu?"

Chu Yuanqing was troubled. Every call she had made to that child had vanished without a trace, and she had received only one curt text message that carried a hint of disgust.

—Don't worry about me.

To Be Honest, if she had not asked the child's homeroom teacher and confirmed that she had returned to the dormitory, the speed of that reply alone would have nearly made her Call Police.

No matter how she looked at it, her daughter "running away from home" was not a good thing.

If not for having just become a Magical Girl and needing to prepare for a Talent Show, she definitely would have visited that very day to check on her daughter before she could rest easy.

Chu Yuanqing untied her apron, neatly put away the washed mop, and looked toward the clean, tidy Living room before making her decision.

"Tomorrow. Once I get more accustomed to this magical body tomorrow and make sure there are no flaws, I'll go to the school and see that child."

As for now...

Chu Yuanqing looked at the text message sent by the official Shining Stage account. The content of the first episode she would be recording was confidential, and she would not know what it was until she arrived on-site.

However, judging from what the Remaining contestants had discussed at the audition venue, programs like this were all fundamentally the same. The first episode would introduce every trainee, followed by the most important part: the grade assessment.

The so-called grade assessment involved having the trainees perform and display their singing and dancing abilities, after which the mentors would comment on them and assign grades according to their skill levels.

From highest to lowest, they were A-Class, B-Class, C-Class, D-Class, and F-Class.

F-Class stood for failed, and more or less meant being sent off for recycling.

Chu Yuanqing had Self-awareness. Even among F-Class trainees, she would be at the very bottom.

After all, a complete beginner in singing and dancing sneaking into an idol selection show was no different from a husky wandering into a pack of wolves. She truly had no competitive edge.

Still, she was earning a monthly salary of twelve thousand. She could not exactly open her mouth and go "ah-ba-ah-ba" when it was her turn to perform, then muddle through by being cute, could she?

So, at the very least, she had to learn one song and one dance within two weeks. Ideally, she needed to reach the program's minimum standard so she could keep coasting along, fill screen time, and collect her paycheck.

For a former Savior and current Magical Girl, this was not a particularly difficult task.

The key was only...

—How exactly was she supposed to overcome the shame of dancing while people watched?

At that thought, heat crept into Chu Yuanqing's normally indifferent face. Her doll-like features showed A few points of frustration and embarrassment.

She had once wielded the demon sword Laevateinn in one hand to burn calamity beasts to ashes, while holding up the Wall of Sighs with the other to protect The world. All Humanity had placed their final hope in her, and she had successfully changed the predetermined ending—the Savior!

Yet now she had to wear a fluttering little dress, stand upon a star-studded stage, and perform a dance meant to display feminine charm. The gap between the two was so absurd it was almost impossible to comprehend.

Even though she had prepared herself to face All of this before choosing to become a Magical Girl, merely imagining Scenes like that now made her future seem utterly bleak.

Maybe... she should just go ah-ba-ah-ba after all!

Chu Yuanqing nearly blacked out. Only after silently recalling workplace KPIs, sales targets, scoldings from company superiors, cleaning up her colleagues' messes, and being crushed half to death on the subway did she finally Found back the courage to go on stage from the bitterness and despair of being a Corporate Slave.

Deep breaths, deep breaths!

It was just dancing. Compared to working 996, it... it was nothing to be afraid of!

Chu Yuanqing gave up struggling and flopped limply onto the sofa like a dejected cat. With a melancholy sigh, she raised her old phone, whose screen protector was already shattered, and obediently searched for performances by past Shining Stage contestants.

"Huh? This program is global?"

The girl looked at the page and blinked in confusion. Before losing her job, she had always been in a high-intensity work state with almost no time for entertainment. Yet even so, she had learned of this show from streets, alleys, and fragmented information feeds.

She had originally assumed it was an ordinary Variety Show Talent Show. Yet judging from the official website and news from every direction, it was actually an epic, enormous talent show jointly organized by the governments of various countries?

According to online rumors, Shining Stage was expected to run far longer than previous shows, and its ultimate potential was terrifying enough to create a World Idol with ten billion in traffic.

Unlike conventional Talent Shows, Shining Stage was more like a broad, massive IP project.

Governments from countries All over the world provided connections and funding. Major first-tier cities lent their names to the project, held corresponding pilot programs and auditions, and selected single-digit winner groups from among hundreds of trainees.

The Donghuang Federation consisted of forty-eight countries, while the Sacred United Nation consisted of twenty-seven.

Even Great Xia Nation alone, where Chu Yuanqing lived, had two super first-tier cities: Sea Capital and Kyoto.

Even taking Great Xia Nation's immense national strength into account, there were still dozens of simultaneous talent shows bearing the Shining Stage name scattered All over the world. Its scale was beyond description.

It can be said that the winner groups selected from each pilot site under the same project would ordinarily be preparing to debut on the strength of their popularity. Yet within the Shining Stage project, they were still only gathering momentum before taking flight.

—The springtime of idols.

That was how netizens described it.

And for her, someone who only wanted to coast, neither the project's potential nor its popularity was worth caring about.

—That was how it should have been.

But some memories were like rapeseed flowers: the moment one stopped paying attention, they would bloom across the mountains and plains. She suddenly thought of that friend, the only one who had stayed with her and fought until the end.

The girl's tall, graceful body burned in the flames. Her rapidly carbonizing corpse sprouted in the wind, turning into crystalline flowers that bloomed and shattered before her eyes. Back then, her nose could not smell blood. All she could smell was clear cedar, scorched roses, and... shattered hope.

Even though the world had been corrected, the suffering of the past was still carved into her bones, tangled around the ends of her nerves, and faintly aching with every transmission of pheromones.

Doomsday Diva.

After many years, the scenes rising from the depths of the well once more replayed her ending.

Chu Yuanqing stared blankly ahead and murmured.

"Shining Stage... it sounds as though it was made for you."

"But whether this show existed or not, in a world without calamity beasts, you, who loved the stage so much, would definitely have become the best idol."

At this moment, as her Emotions shifted, black lines gradually stained her gorgeous irises, like pale golden amber mottled by the passage of time. Then, almost In the blink of an eye, her distracted grip slipped, and the phone smashed directly into her face with a bang, producing a crisp, heavy impact.

Tears welled up in the girl's eyes, and her eye color returned to normal. She hurriedly clutched her nose, rolling Back and forth on the sofa in pain before tumbling onto the freezing floor, looking exactly like a kitten that had been tricked by a laser pointer into darting around wildly.

Volume 1: 5. Father and Daughter Meet.

The next day, morning.

Sea Capital Foreign Language Private High School.

The arts building, dance studio.

The girl's dark hair was smooth as silk, its raven-blue color making her skin appear even fairer. She stretched her joints in front of the wall mirror, and her soft, water-like long legs formed beautiful curves as she stretched. Her skin-tight dancewear made every movement especially eye-catching.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, painting the scene with youth and beauty.

Five minutes later, a knock at the door disturbed the cold, quiet dance studio.

A little girl with a bun and a school uniform entered through the door. Looking at the scene inside, her gaze drifted enviously over the other girl's slender waist and long legs. Only when their eyes met did she blink awkwardly and say, "Senior Chu, Teacher Chen said your Dad is here to see you. He's waiting in her office now."

Chu Wangshu frowned at this. She put on her school jacket and pulled the zipper all the way up, concealing the full curves of her upper body. Then she stepped into a somewhat worn pair of canvas shoes, tied her long hair into a ponytail, politely thanked her junior, and left the arts building.

The dance studio was not far from the teaching building.

Chu Wangshu quickly reached the appropriate floor and saw a figure standing beside the corridor, staring blankly into space and gazing toward the sky.

If she did not judge him through a biased lens, then from the perspective of a girl her own age, her father truly was a rather charming man.

Chu Yuanqing had regular, handsome features, clear brows and eyes, and an expression always clouded with melancholy and filled with the weariness of time. His face held the sense of story young girls loved most. As he stood there now, his eternally upright and silent figure drew every gaze around him.

—An extraordinarily distinctive presence.

When she was young, he had been a wall that made her feel safe. Like a scent that evoked certain memories, he had always been remembered by the subconscious deep in her mind.

But now...

Those memories only made Chu Wangshu angry when they surfaced.

The girl looked at that face, as calm as ever.

Chu Yuanqing seemed to have hidden all his exhaustion and despondency deep within his soul, leaving not the slightest trace of unnecessary emotion. All that remained was a deathly, precise mechanical quality.

The next moment, an advertisement from the international department building across from the teaching building was projected onto an ivory-white wall, playing outside precisely at dismissal time as usual.

"The harder you work, the luckier you become!"

"Turn the tables against the wind, and grow toward the sun!"

"An epic World Superstar cultivation project! A brand-new talent show system unlike anything before! An Entertainment Revolution destined to ignite the world! A passionate stage carrying the dreams of hundreds of trainees!"

"All of this will officially be unveiled on July 3rd!"

Chu Wangshu had long grown used to this promotional advertisement, which was obviously out of place in a high school.

The project organizers had spared no expense on advertising, and with official backing, nearly every high school in Great Xia Nation had similar marketing.

But what puzzled her was that, as the commercial's sound lingered in the hallway, Chu Yuanqing suddenly seemed a little more alive. He even looked somewhat... panicked?

Yes.

Chu Yuanqing truly was panicking.

She had always believed her daughter was the most standard model student: no chasing celebrities, no dramas, no games, living a healthy plant-like life of sleeping early and rising early, completely disconnected from Variety Shows like Shining Stage.

But who could have imagined that this show's promotion would be so outrageous that it had even infiltrated schools?

The more Chu Yuanqing thought about it, the more panicked she became. What if Xiao Shu became interested and actually watched the show?

Although Xiao Shu did not know who she was, if she really saw her, how would that be any different from a public execution?

The only difference would be whether her lewd pictures were seen—with censorship or without!

Chu Wangshu watched her father's ever-changing microexpressions and Always feel that something was off.

However, her mind was filled with practicing dance as soon as possible to prepare for the recording two weeks later. She had no desire to scrutinize these details. Growing impatient, she broke the silence and asked, "Stop spacing out. Didn't you come to see me about something?"

Though the coldness in her words and the implication behind them both clearly told him to leave quickly if he had nothing to say, from Chu Yuanqing's perspective, the scene before her was simply an unhappy little child sulking. It was very cute.

—Yes, that was what a daughter filter did.

And the cuter she found her daughter, the less she wanted her authority to quietly crumble away!

Chu Yuanqing pretended to be making conversation as she probed, "Xiao Shu, does your school play this advertisement every day?"

"Yeah. It's been playing for almost half a month, I think. Why are you asking?"

Chu Wangshu answered without changing expression, but alarm bells were blaring in her heart. Like a little cat secretly puffing up its fur and rising onto its toes, she was incredibly tense.

Could Dad be interested in this?

No, she absolutely could not let Dad become interested in the show. She did not want him to discover her in the very first episode!

Chu Yuanqing failed to notice her daughter's tension. Hearing that, she only felt darkness close in before her eyes.