You look pretty damn awesome too

The brilliant clouds filling the sky shone through the cloud cover after the rain, bathing the earth and falling on Lin Fengmian.

He smacked his lips and felt around for his phone with his eyes shut. After searching for ages without finding it, he abruptly sat up and stared at the page number displayed in the open novel.

Page 2.

Lin Fengmian: "..." It really wasn't his fault. The novel was too sleep-inducing.

He glanced around guiltily, confirmed that he was in his own room, then flipped to the latter half of the novel as though destroying evidence and patted it in satisfaction. That was right. He had read over a hundred pages in one afternoon.

Fantastic.

Having made his preparations, he found his phone beneath his butt and breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he saw that it wasn't Lin Sui.

Chen Mu was a music blogger he had met online. The guy livestreamed without showing his face, and his streams only had a handful of viewers. He couldn't retain an audience at all.

Lin Fengmian had stumbled into his stream by chance, found his singing particularly sleep-inducing, and followed him. He had stayed a follower for years.

Whenever he couldn't sleep soundly, he would open the stream, tip a hundred yuan, and listen to Chen Mu sing. It worked every time.

After he appeared often enough, Chen Mu also noticed this big spender in his stream.

On the principle that he ought to build a good relationship with a big spender, the socially anxious Chen Mu had steeled himself and sent Lin Fengmian a private message. Lin Fengmian hadn't seen it until six months later.

The two had kept in touch through the platform's chat window at a pace where a message might take several months to be seen by the other person.

They had only added each other on WeChat because Chen Mu had signed with a talent agency but never managed to get anywhere. Feeling depressed, he had vented to Lin Fengmian every day.

With the unread count hitting 99+ countless times, Lin Fengmian could hardly miss it.

To soothe his sleep-inducing buddy, Lin Fengmian had added Chen Mu on WeChat.

The latest messages were from today, while the one before that was from two years ago.

Lin Fengmian stared at the words "guest duet partner," feeling that they sounded a little familiar.

[Empire Singer?]

Chen Mu replied quickly.

[I think so. I didn't really look when I signed the contract.]

Lin Fengmian: "..." Have you forgotten that contract you signed away your life with two years ago? You really took a fall without learning a thing.

Chen Mu seemed to know what Lin Fengmian was thinking.

[I'm already this far down on my luck. A little more won't make a difference.]

Fair enough.

Lin Fengmian figured Chen Mu wouldn't be able to leave his current agency anytime soon. Having work to do was better than sitting at the company every day watching everyone else make it big while achieving nothing himself.

[All right. What song? Let me take a look.]

Chen Mu quickly sent over his original song.

[Take a look and practice a bit. We're recording tomorrow. Meet me at this address at nine tomorrow.]

Lin Fengmian received a location pin from Chen Mu.

Yawning, he printed out the score, sat down at the piano, and practiced until dinner.

He saw Lin Sui at the dining table.

Song Su looked fondly at her younger son, who was finally going out to work. "Sui told me someone invited you to act in a drama?"

After practicing the piano for over an hour, Lin Fengmian was too tired to talk. He shoveled food into his mouth with his eyes closed. Eat quickly, then go upstairs and keep practicing. I can't mess up Chen Mu's job.

Even if he was only clutching at Buddha's feet at the last minute, he should at least make those feet look nice.

Song Su was already used to her son turning into a robot with a dead battery every evening. Whether he heard her or not, she continued, "Mom's looked over the script for you. It really suits your image. You can definitely do it. Give it your best!"

The family wasn't short on money and could easily support their younger son, but Song Su still hoped Lin Fengmian could enter society and interact with people like a normal person, rather than remaining inseparable from his bed all day long.

Lin Sui kept his head down and ate. Hearing Song Su say that the third male lead's image suited Lin Fengmian, he inexplicably thought of a beautiful waste of space.

He wanted to laugh but didn't dare, desperately holding it in.

After dinner, Lin Sui got the contract Lin Fengmian had signed and went to reply to Fan Jing.

Fan Jing hadn't expected good news so soon and couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief. After all, anyone who hung out with Xia Qinghe was bound to come from a reasonably well-off family. None of them needed money.

They might well turn down a third male lead who only appeared in three episodes and paid so little.

To her surprise, Lin Fengmian had accepted. Fan Jing happily called the director and producer.

"Yes, he's already signed. Don't worry. He's absolutely, absolutely the Yun Yaoxian I have in mind. I'll bring him in for a styling test tomorrow."

"Tomorrow won't work. I have something on tomorrow," Lin Fengmian told Fan Jing flatly. "The day after."

"That works too."

Empire Singer was about to air, yet there had still been no announcement of who would replace Yu Huan. Fans of the show kept asking under its official account.

The production team merely kept them in suspense, saying only that it would be a mystery guest and to stay tuned.

Lin Fengmian had no idea whether anyone else was looking forward to it. When his alarm woke him, at any rate, his soul had yet to return to his body. An empty shell, he pulled on a T-shirt and had the driver take him to the recording hall.

He and Chen Mu arrived almost simultaneously, though Chen Mu had taken the subway. From a distance, Chen Mu spotted a young man standing at the entrance in a white T-shirt and black knee-length shorts, a stretch of pale calf exposed. He was holding two colorful cotton candies and chomping away, his face completely obscured.

Instinctively, he felt that this had to be Lin Fengmian.

"Fengmian?" Chen Mu called tentatively.

"Huh?" Lin Fengmian lifted his head from the cotton candy but saw no one. "Where are you?"

"Down here?"

Lin Fengmian lowered his head and finally saw Chen Mu. "Your hairstyle's really cool."

Chen Mu rubbed his hands. It was his first time meeting an online friend, and it was rather awkward. His limited social experience told him that this was the moment to exchange compliments. "You look pretty damn awesome too."

Lin Fengmian: "..." This was the first time he had learned that he looked like "pretty damn awesome."

Chen Mu's lips moved hesitantly. For someone as socially anxious as him, dealing with people was harder than giving up his life.

Holding his two cotton candies, Lin Fengmian noticed Chen Mu staring at him, his lips trembling. "Are you okay? Is your blood sugar low?"

Lin Fengmian instinctively tried to hand him the cotton candy, then suddenly realized that he had already licked it beyond recognition. He quickly turned it around, presenting the unlicked side to Chen Mu. "I haven't licked this side. Here."

Chen Mu knew Lin Fengmian had misunderstood. "I don't have low blood sugar."

Lin Fengmian felt that he was lying. "You look like you're about to keel over."

Chen Mu said, "I have social anxiety."

Lin Fengmian felt a little envious of Chen Mu. Social anxiety was such a great trait. He wanted it too. That way, his mother wouldn't spend every day thinking about making him integrate into society and become one big happy family with strangers.

Chen Mu realized that Lin Fengmian was actually the same person he knew online, and became less nervous. "Let's hurry inside. It's about to start."

Yet after the two of them had waited inside for ages, with the production staff bustling back and forth, there was still no sign of anything starting.

They asked and learned that the others hadn't arrived yet.

As a nobody, Chen Mu fully lived up to that industry label, huddling in a corner without daring to hurry the production team.

Meanwhile, Lin Fengmian was already hugging his backpack and sleeping soundly. Whichever big shot was late, what the hell did it have to do with him?