Kiriwake Yayoi returned to the empty dorm room, keeping up appearances.
She took her pajamas from the wardrobe, as if she were about to take a shower, and sensibly blocked the dorm's camera. Then she walked into the bathroom and looked at the person in the mirror, whose smile had vanished and whose eyes were empty.
Why was she so close to her?
Why hadn't she refused?
Again. Again. Again.
Uncontrollable jealousy, unreasonable possessiveness, indescribable bitterness, unprecedented anger, and even... a destructive urge she could barely hold back.
—Meeting Chu Yuanqing had helped.
At least her ravenous appetite for the stage had been smothered by emotions far more intense.
But she couldn't.
She couldn't go on like this.
Even if Xiao Shu's method could distract her from this possessiveness,
if she didn't come up with a reasonable solution that didn't violate her principles before then, and find a way to keep Xiao Qing at a suitable distance from the others, sooner or later her own stage would be tainted by dark impurities.
No, that wasn't right either.
Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.
After repeating the words, Kiriwake Yayoi looked at herself in the mirror. She tilted her head slightly, made a finger-gun with her hand, slowly raised it, and pointed it at the reflection's heart.
The Perfect Performance Method, which under normal circumstances only appeared onstage, surged like a roaring tsunami, activating and flowing on its own. The flood of emotions even carried her into another subtle state of [Flow State].
Darkness lingered in her eyes, and her rosy lips parted.
Then came a bang!
An illusory roar echoed in her ears.
Her empty hand seemed to grip a gun, simulating the entire process: the firing pin struck the bullet, the gunpowder exploded, and the resulting force sent a brass-colored bullet flying.
Rustle, rustle.
In the phantasm only Kiriwake Yayoi could see, an unsightly hole appeared in her chest. The bullet had passed indifferently through her heart, and a spray of blood bloomed like a beautiful rose. The acrid smoke and scent of blood slowly burned and charred in her nostrils.
At last, the intense pain succeeded in wiping out her excess emotions.
The confusion in her heart was defeated by an imaginary bullet in such an absurd way. Through forceful self-suggestion, she managed to calm her boiling emotions.
"It's been so long since I used it. I'm a little rusty."
Kiriwake Yayoi murmured.
She had always been like this. Before she ever set foot on a real stage, when her groupmates bullied her, when a shady company exploited her, when she made mistakes onstage and was so frustrated she wanted to die, when she wanted to give up again and again but wouldn't allow herself to...
The Perfect Performance Method would become her greatest support.
Actually, back then, it wasn't called the Perfect Performance Method. It was only the method's prototype.
Without laying the technical groundwork bit by bit through this twisted form of self-hypnosis, the Perfect Performance Method—which could force its user into [Flow State] upon taking the stage—would never have come into being.
But as time went on, her true self grew more resilient. Even during the period when she was forced to graduate, she managed to restrain herself, using the method only once a month on average.
And now, someone had driven her to use this pathological method of self-correction again.
Kiriwake Yayoi smoothed the wrinkles in the fabric over her chest. Without expression, she stepped closer to the mirror and reached out to adjust the muscles at the corners of her lips. As usual, she practiced smiling, displaying the flawless curve she had honed through years of practice.
In an instant,
the charm of her smile spread like mist, offering the beauty of early spring and a warmth capable of melting snow and ice.
—I want to become a perfect idol.
—I want to find sincere friendship.
The road to achieving the former was full of twists and turns.
She had always thought that was only natural.
But was even the process of finding friendship as painful as the thorny path she had to tread to become an idol?
That was right.
If something was as precious as treasure, then of course she had to pay the price to obtain it.
The throne of an idol was like that, and so was sincere friendship.
She had been too naive. She had been wrong from the very beginning, and that was why she feared the jealousy and possessiveness in her heart, foolishly trapping herself in a vicious circle of thoughts and obsessing over some pointless impurity.
But what kind of impurity was desire itself?
All she had to do was compare friendship to a spot in the debut lineup, and she would see that this was a contest of self-interest.
So...
It was perfectly normal to do whatever it took, as long as she stayed within reason, wasn't it?
P.S. I had another fever of 38.9 degrees last night, so I spent the whole night half-asleep and dazed. I slept for less than three hours before getting up to go for an IV drip. I got home around noon today, but couldn't fall asleep to catch up, so I just stayed at my desk and kept writing.
P.S. Sigh, this book has finally reached ten thousand subscribers. Its performance is as niche as I expected, but I've still had fun writing it.
P.S. It's the end of the month, so if you have any monthly votes, please send them my way.
Volume One: 64. Paper Tiger, Chu Wangshu's Turn (6K)
A-Qiu!
Not long after Chu Yuanqing left the dorm, she suddenly bent over and let out a cute sneeze. She frowned in confusion, rubbed her straight, delicate nose, and immediately sensed that something was wrong.
Something was up!
Although her intuition—once so strong it had been comparable to the Way of Sincerity and the ability to foresee the future—had been nerfed, her wealth of experience had taught her that Murphy's law worked especially well on her.
So something bad was definitely about to happen!
Chu Yuanqing grew serious and tried to think it through.
Thinking carefully, she could first rule out problems with her relationships, then the possibility of an outside popularity boom. That left... the imminent Second Evaluation and the Public Performance right after it!
The thought made the girl feel guilty. She began to wonder if she had underestimated idols and the stage, and whether her preparations were still insufficient, leaving her liable to mess up and drag the other girls down with her.
Whatever! If things really went south, she'd just have Charlotte possess her and call in a carry!
Chu Yuanqing patted her cheeks, stopped overthinking, and hurried toward the practice room.
There wasn't much time left. If she wanted to perform normally onstage, she needed to get familiar with the breathing method and learn how to use it together with Candy. Otherwise, she would have a hard time getting through even the basics of singing and dancing.
Just as she arrived at the C-Class practice room, the viewers who had been following the situation closely went wild:
"???"
"I'm dying to know, I'm dying to know, I'm dying to know! What happened???!"
"My gossip-loving soul is about to burn out! Are there any Sherlock Holmeses or Leeuwenhoeks who can piece it together?"
"Little Sakura clearly came to see Qing Bao, and the dorm door happened to be open. She stood there for ages before leaving. There are only two possibilities: either no one was inside and she was waiting out of politeness, or someone was inside and did something so shocking it left her stunned!"
"Ahh, ahh, did Qing Bao pin the Great Demon King against the wall and have her way with her????"
"Younger wife top. Correct, spot-on, refined taste without sacrificing elegance???."
Under the audience's watchful eyes, all demons and monsters would be exposed for everyone to see. But unfortunately, the resolution and viewing angles of the contestants' personal livestreams were just like security-camera footage from a guard booth.
Whether it was Kiriwake Yayoi's fleeting microexpressions, the shade of white-peach lipstick on Chu Yuanqing's lips, or how damp Xie Qingxuan's hair was when she walked out, none of it could be made out clearly in the shifting, distant shots.
You could only call this a deliberate tease by the Flash Dance production team, designed to boost views for the Second Evaluation stage and keep its behind-the-scenes clips ahead of the competition.
But the viewers ate it up anyway, cursing as they watched with delight.
After all... something was better than nothing. What other audition show livestreamed at all? And what other show could split its stream into 168 subchannels, offering viewers such luxurious freedom to choose what they watched?
Flash Dance gave viewers so many details. On a normal audition show, gossip this juicy would never make it online without a few insiders piecing together and transcribing what they knew. Even if it did get posted, it would only spread within a small circle, and might not even be accurate.
As for now, they hadn't seen the whole picture, but at least it was real, leaving plenty of room for every CP fandom to imagine.
The fan artists in the various CP supertopic communities and small groups were already itching to get started. Surely fanfics about cheating in front of one's spouse, nonconsensual sex, NTR, and twisted White Album-style love triangles would soon appear out of nowhere.
Meanwhile, the Second Evaluation for the B-Class contestants officially began.
And just as many viewers had expected, even the First A-Class contestants—standing at the very top of the trainees' pyramid and having received the most advanced idol-training methods—performed abysmally overall. The B-Class contestants, one level below them, needed no further explanation.
Dance power, facial expressions, breathing and rhythm, stamina management, lyrics and vocal delivery.
These were the basics to keep in mind when singing and dancing onstage. Only after that could contestants move on to things like the details of their movements, conveying emotion through their eyes and smiles, creating an atmosphere, and building stage presence and emotional impact.
It was worth noting that even the Great Demon King, who had amazed the audience at the start, had only managed to perform the so-called basics onstage. She hadn't advanced to the later stages.
There were two reasons Xie Qingxuan had stood out above the rest.
First, in the virtual projection, a situation that could only be called unexpected, simply avoiding mistakes in all the basics was already a victory.
Second, she had used Meditation State to detach herself from her sense of self, delivering the most flawless basic performance. It had a graceful, effortless beauty to it.
Among the other First A-Class contestants, only Ji Shuzhu, whose specialty happened to match, could go toe-to-toe with her in that regard.
In other words, what determined a contestant's score was how well they could handle the basics of singing and dancing onstage.
Unfortunately...
"That was awful."
"Can they even dance?"
"I know they're under a lot of pressure, but couldn't they even remember to warm up their voices?"
"The First A-Class contestants before them suddenly look so good."
"It can't be helped. Little Sakura set the bar high, so they look like a bunch of clowns in comparison. If the Great Demon King had gone on after Little Sakura, people would've said she'd fallen from grace too."
With such a huge fan base, malicious and mocking comments poured in without end.
But even more numerous were comments full of sympathy and regret.
Everyone knew there were plenty of things that couldn't be changed through hard work alone.
Even if the contestants knew in advance about the Second Evaluation's tricks, the stage adaptability that came from building up experience relied eighty percent on an idol's natural talent. Only the rest came down to the hard work done offstage.
Chen Yining might have been an exception.
But that was the result of both powerful backing and hard work, and she had happened to find a setting where she could put her skills to use. It was a personal opportunity that could hardly be replicated.
Besides, who could deny that she had idol potential too?
There were 26 B-Class contestants. After 70 minutes, plenty of highly anticipated contestants had suffered the cruel fate of falling short:
"Luo Chan's got it so bad. She dropped to C-Class."
"I'm crying. My girl did too!"
"At this rate, how many will even be left in A-Class and B-Class?"
"This is straight-up raising Gu."
Before long, Tang Liuli also took her turn as one of the B-Class contestants.
The audience had little confidence in her performance, and most comments were full of doubt.
Tang Liuli had once been a child star prodigy who had shaken the entertainment industry. But setting aside whether her professional skills had declined over the years, crossing over into singing and dancing—fields unrelated to acting—was bound to draw criticism.
What's more, her B-Class practice room had been livestreamed almost every day. Casual viewers and fans had a clear idea of her level. Even with her vocal advantage, she was only average for B-Class.
But what happened next shocked everyone.
When the beautiful girl, who seemed gloomy and socially awkward, truly stood onstage before the virtual projections—so lifelike they were hard to distinguish from the real thing—she acted as if she didn't even notice them.
She used an average dance routine as her foundation, channeling her expressive voice and vocal technique to deliver her performance. With this original approach, she put the song's theme into her voice, making her the first B-Class contestant to win an A-Class evaluation!
Tang Liuli lowered her gaze to the illusory lights. Her talent let her recognize, savor, and use emotions. The obstacles Dream Weaver Rabbit had carefully designed were nothing more than a boring illusion to her, and posed no obstacle at all.
The girl's emerald eyes were deep, and the beauty mark at the corner of her eye was captivating. She switched off her microphone and murmured softly:
"Lifeless things can't shine at all."
With that, she left the stage.
Before you continue