The name "Raising House" had come from the fans.
It referred to "What Should We Do Today?", the live-streamed daily-life observation variety show produced in-house by their company, Starlight Entertainment.
The show's main draw was letting fans observe young idols' daily lives up close, satisfying their desire to "raise them online."
Raising House had nine livestream channels in total. To attract more casual viewers, the main stream was free to watch.
The remaining eight paid channels each followed one of the eight residents.
Once you moved in, everything you did was entirely up to you. Even if you slept until the sun was high in the sky, no one would say anything.
But gaining fans required some planning.
One of the easiest, cheapest, yet most effective methods was selling BL fanservice.
Almost none of the residents escaped it. The only difference was whether they did it actively or passively.
In an age when fans could slow down a single exchanged glance between two handsome men several times over and read countless meanings into it, no man who entered this house could remain innocent.
A rival company that had failed to copy this model had even tried pushing the narrative that "Raising House" was really "BL Fanservice House."
But there was plenty of room to argue against that, and the narrative had ultimately failed to take off.
A week earlier, Fang Jin, the popular CP partner of Raising House's "star attraction," Xie Weishui, had been invited to a brand event. Xie Weishui had gone to the supermarket to buy a pile of things, then deliberately declared himself exhausted at the entrance and said he needed to grab someone from the "junior trainee group chat" for manual labor.
Zhou Yang had been that laborer.
He worked without complaint, talked sweetly and often, and spent the entire time orbiting Xie Weishui as his devoted little shadow, displaying particular enthusiasm.
Soon, someone had edited clips of their interactions.
His appearance had breathed new life into the Fang Jin-Xie Weishui CP, which had already settled into "old married couple" mode, while also boosting the concurrent viewer count that had been falling for days.
Like right now. The main stream had already surpassed 100,000 concurrent viewers, an extremely impressive figure for a weekday morning.
Chi Li watched coldly as Zhou Yang wore a smile of feigned, cautious eagerness to please on the screen.
"Fuck, that scumbag. What a fake. How come he never gives us that bootlicking smile?" Gu Nan fumed beside him. "He looks like a fucking idiot. What viewer would like that?"
Chi Li glanced at him and reached over to turn on the bullet comments.
[Junior! Keep grinning and you're going to start drooling. Show some restraint, okay, okay, okay? Don't stare your senior into blushing.]
[I just love how junior has absolutely no dignity.]
[Junior, you're really hot when you love men. Please keep it up.]
[Fang Jin's sense of crisis +9999]
[Rooting for junior to take his place!]
[What do I do? I like both of them. They both look so good with Shuishui aaaaah [screaming]]
[It's only two dicks...]
Gu Nan switched off the comments with a sour expression. "Viewers these days have absolutely no taste."
Chi Li said nothing and switched from the main stream to Zhou Yang's personal channel.
Concurrent viewers: 5,597.
Membership for a personal channel cost fifty yuan a month, and the three-minute free previews did not count toward concurrent viewers.
That meant Zhou Yang had already generated nearly 280,000 yuan in revenue less than ten minutes after appearing.
Half of that 280,000 would go into his own pocket.
"Watching him make money genuinely feels worse than being killed," Chi Li muttered under his breath.
Over the past two days, Zhou Yang had sent him plenty more messages.
Either he sent inexplicable pictures of his abs or dick, or he said that people wanting to get fucked by him would have to line up in the future, so Chi Li might as well do it now rather than regret it later. Or he would suddenly play the emotional card, saying a relationship without sex was incomplete.
Whatever he said, it all came down to wanting to fuck Chi Li.
He had never expected all the little good things accumulated over the past three months to vanish completely in just three days.
Zhou Yang's existence was like a heavy slap across his face, constantly reminding him that he was a blind, clueless idiot who couldn't judge people.
He was an idiot, and Zhou Yang was a slut.
He really couldn't stand watching that slut thrive right under his nose.
"We'll be able to make money too," Gu Nan comforted him quietly, patting his back. "We'll make ten times, a hundred times what he does!"
"Hmph..."
As he watched the concurrent viewer count on Zhou Yang's personal paid channel keep climbing, Chi Li couldn't take it anymore.
He slapped the tablet he had been watching facedown on the table and shot to his feet. "It's just BL fanservice, isn't it? If he can sell it, so can I! I refuse to believe I can't outsell him!"
Gu Nan jumped. "Bro, what are you planning?"
Chi Li picked up his phone from beside him and started looking for his manager's chat. "I'm going into Raising House. I'm going to find someone to sell BL fanservice with."
"Don't be impulsive, bro." Gu Nan hurriedly grabbed his forearm. "Impulse is the devil. Besides, who could you even do it with? Y-you can't join that love triangle too, can you?"
"Of course not."
Chi Li found Li Ming, the manager in charge of their batch of trainees, quickly typed [I want to sell BL fanservice], and hit send.
"But apart from those three, everyone in Raising House has very low popularity, and none of them are taller than you. Where's the CP chemistry supposed to come from?" Gu Nan was deeply worried.
"They don't have to be taller than me."
Chi Li turned the tablet faceup again.
The three-minute preview was over. A large page urging him to pay for membership filled the screen, and the concurrent viewer count in the upper right had stopped at 6,054.
"Are you going to become a top for revenge?" Horror was written all over Gu Nan's face.
He really couldn't imagine his fair-skinned, beautiful older cousin topping.
"...Not exactly." Chi Li switched to another resident's paid channel, planning to freeload for another three minutes. "But I think I could act the part just fine."
The channel he had switched to was very quiet. The concurrent viewer count in the upper right was a pitiful 954, not even reaching 1,000.
The man on-screen had distanced himself from the group holding Zhou Yang's welcome feast and was sitting alone on the sofa playing games.
"I think his partner was the one Zhou Yang pushed out," Gu Nan said ruefully. "Though their CP was pretty dead anyway."
Although Raising House had always sold BL fanservice, deliberately or otherwise, viewers were picky too. Throwing any two men together didn't mean someone would ship them.
Chi Li said nothing and switched to another person.
"His persona overlaps with Xie Weishui's, but he isn't as bitchy as Xie Weishui. Now all he can do is sell their bestie bond."
On to the next one.
Gu Nan said, "This one is Xie Weishui's simp. Some people ship them, but not many. People don't really go for shorter tops, after all, or Zhou Yang wouldn't have had a chance to take that spot."
Chi Li glanced at him and kept switching. "You've really studied all of them?"
"I know a thing or two, hehe." Gu Nan rubbed his hands together. "This is Fang Jin, Xie Weishui's original partner. Their setup is the iceberg who only melts for his little sunshine, though next they'll probably switch to the jealous type or the wife-chasing setup."
As one half of Raising House's current hottest CP, Fang Jin had over 30,000 concurrent viewers on his personal livestream channel.
"Not bad at all." Chi Li nodded slowly, acknowledging Fang Jin's good looks.