Chapter 22

They wanted to ship the gorgeous dual-rapper pairing.

But after watching the music show performance and catching up on the earlier evaluation footage, they discovered that the leader wasn't even the group's designated rapper.

In other words, he had deliberately changed yesterday's live music festival performance to that format.

Why?

Why else?

The shippers went quiet for a moment.

Then the shippers went wild.

Damn it, you couldn't fucking call yourself Chinese if you didn't ship this!

Gu Zhijing didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he scrolled this far.

The fans naturally had no idea that Brother Chi had made the little change because he was worried Gu Zhijing's live performance wouldn't hold up.

Yet it had achieved an unexpectedly winning effect instead.

Well, that was fine too.

If promoting their ship could benefit the whole group, he certainly had no objections.

Besides.

Gu Zhijing thought of Sheng Chi, and the corners of his mouth curled up.

If Brother Chi was the one he was being paired with, then there really wasn't anything wrong with it.

But just as Color4's popularity was soaring and everyone was predicting they would soon become the idol scene's next big thing, an old story came to light.

The first person to speak up started a thread on an anonymous forum, saying that Color4's marketing had been so good that, in the blink of an eye, no one remembered the mess surrounding their debut anymore.

The replies were full of question marks-???-urging the poster to share more details.

At that moment, the members of Color4 had just returned from D City, exhausted.

Who could have imagined that they had only blown up a day ago, yet the airport would already be packed with fans who had come to see them?

Fei Yue had miscalculated.

He had thought it would take some time for online traffic to translate into an offline fan presence. He hadn't expected fans these days to be so driven that they would show up just like that.

Fei Yue hadn't arranged for them to use the VIP passage in advance, and using it would have seemed a little excessive given their current status anyway. He could only hurriedly arrange for a few more security guards to force a path for Color4 through the crowd of fans.

As soon as they landed, Fei Yue's phone exploded with messages.

He hurriedly sent Color4 back to the dorm and told them to get some rest, promising to arrange their follow-up work in a few days. Then he rushed straight back to the company to contact its only two PR staff members.

On his way over, he couldn't help smiling bitterly to himself.

Color4 had blown up too quickly, and the infrastructure hadn't caught up. Several people at Leap Entertainment were practically doing two jobs each.

Once this period was over, he had to hire several more employees.

When he entered the office, the PR staff and his assistant gave him a general account of the situation.

More than one user had posted in the anonymous section, and the narrative had now spread to the real-name section. Their posts all insinuated that Leap Entertainment's debut evaluations had been rigged, leading to the mass departure of trainees.

Color4's fans hadn't dug back far enough to uncover that painful period and didn't really know the details, so they could only refute the claims on instinct.

[Color4's lineup is already perfect enough, thanks. They have both talent and looks. If it were me, I would've picked these four to debut too.]

[Whose way are we in this time? Ugh. Is it fun to kick our little nugu group while you have the chance?]

[Taking our little nugu group away, not interested, thanks. Girls, don't give them attention. Let's go home and watch the group variety show.]

But bystanders always enjoyed a bigger spectacle. They urged anyone in the know-and even the trainees who had previously left Leap Entertainment, if they were lurking-to spill more insider information.

Fei Yue read through everything before finally taking a deep breath.

A PR staff member frowned slightly. "I don't know who leaked this, but they're steering the narrative well, and they've brought in paid posters too. If we don't act fast, I'm afraid the real-name section on Weibo will soon be overrun."

"Color4 just debuted. With rumors like these, they're probably trying to stop new fans from getting into the group altogether."

"You don't need to worry about that. From the look of things, the fans are still mostly in control of the situation."

Yu Wenwen thought for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Where did Qi Wang go again?"

At the mention of that name, everyone present involuntarily flinched.

The staff member said, "You mean-"

"No, I don't think it necessarily was Qi Wang."

Fei Yue shook his head. "Qi Wang didn't leave on good terms. Kicking us while Color4 is on the rise would do Qi Wang more harm than good. After all, if we made the truth behind Qi Wang's departure public, it certainly wouldn't be good for Qi Wang."

Yu Wenwen sighed. "We still have to guard against someone who's willing to go down with us, don't we?"

"Actually, I'm more inclined to think it's another competitor."

"After all, there's only so much market share for boy groups. How did that saying go again?"

He thought for a moment. "There are only three hundred fangirls on the entire internet?"

Everyone in the office laughed.

"Now that Color4 is rising, they'll take a share of the resources, fans, and the entire boy-group market."

Fei Yue rubbed his brow. He had just started trying to identify their rivals from that angle when he realized there were too many competitors to count. He could only let out a deep sigh.

Under circumstances like these, he keenly felt the disadvantages of Leap Entertainment being a small operation.

Fortunately, there was one saving grace.

The other side didn't seem to know the truth at all.

All their mudslinging came down to claims that Leap had rigged the trainees' debut. To fans who already liked them, that hardly mattered.

The nastier rumors-that all four had been subjected to the casting couch by higher-ups-wouldn't be believed by anyone with half a brain.

Clearly, they had most likely heard a little gossip and fabricated the rest to muddy the waters. They were convinced that Leap Entertainment wouldn't dare come forward to clarify matters, and at most would issue a toothless statement and a useless lawyer's letter warning those spreading rumors, and so on.

But by then, the negative label would already have been slapped on Color4, making it even harder to wash away.

It was a good plan.

What they didn't know was that the trainees' departure from Leap Entertainment had nothing to do with their guesses.

Fei Yue thought it over and over before finally choosing his words carefully. "I'll write a statement and do my best to lay out what happened. Make sure you keep the direction of public opinion under control and have everything afterward arranged properly."

The PR staff member asked, "Which direction should we guide it in?"

Fei Yue smiled. "How else? We'll play up how badly we had it."

Why hadn't he promptly revealed the whole truth when the trainees had left en masse, saying only that the trainees led by Qi Wang had left the company for personal reasons?

First, he had thought the same thing as Sheng Chi: if Color4 truly had what it took, they would prove themselves sooner or later and wipe away the public's negative impression of them.

Second, without a fanbase and with only members of the public who disliked them, no matter how miserable they made it sound, they wouldn't have won a shred of sympathy.

On the contrary, people would only have thought they were playing the victim and trying to smear the trainees who had left.

A stance had taken root in the domestic entertainment industry: fans and the general public were natural enemies of companies.

No matter what a company said, it represented exploitative capital and was the king of a people-devouring den. People only wanted the idols to get away as quickly as possible and wouldn't listen to the company at all.

That was why it would only work now.

Now that Color had begun to gain some ground, when there were fans willing to stand up for them, speak for them, clean up their search results, and control public opinion-when there were fans willing to believe them completely.

Only then would it work.

Fei Yue drafted the statement twice and had someone review it carefully. Once he had confirmed that nothing was wrong, he released it.

The statement made two points.

First, everything had been going smoothly before the debut evaluation, but a trainee had suddenly violated company rules and been dismissed, causing the investors to become unwilling to continue investing in Leap Entertainment.

Second, when Leap Entertainment was on the verge of collapse, only four trainees had been willing to stay with the small company.

They were the present-day Color4.

After the statement was released, the paid fans arranged by Leap Entertainment followed up.

Although Fei Yue hadn't gone into detail, an insider revealed that the trainee who left hadn't left on good terms. As a result, Leap Entertainment's early development had been fraught with difficulties, and Color4 had had a hard time.

The fans were already angry about the earlier baseless rumors. When they saw the statement, they gave it some thought.

They understood.

Rigged evaluations, capital pulling strings, preselected royal trainees-it was all bullshit.

Why had they been able to debut?

Because at that time, they were the only ones left.

The people who could hold on to their dreams.

Were the ones who deserved to be lifted up in the end.

Once Color4's image as beautiful, strong, and tragic was established, the fans' hearts immediately ached for them.

Even if rival companies tried to suppress their rise afterward, it would only make the fans more distressed and more devoted.

Just like that, Fei Yue turned the situation around.

But in truth, no matter how much the fans dug into the past or how much their hearts ached, they didn't know what had happened during those days and nights without flowers, applause, or cheers.

They hadn't been part of that past.

They might have known that the members once had a hard time, that they had to reuse their clothes, and that they rented places for recording and filming their music videos. But they didn't know that they had been mistreated at promotional appearances, eaten the cheapest boxed meals, endured the fiercest sun, and stayed up through the latest nights.

They might have known that Leap had nearly gone bankrupt during that period, but they didn't know what Fei Yue had sacrificed to save the company on the brink of crisis, or how much effort the members had put in and how much determination it had taken for them to stay.

While writing the statement, Fei Yue had suddenly wanted very badly to say something.

Do you know?

You came so close-so very close-to never seeing Color4 debut.

Thank goodness. Thank goodness.

The bitterness has given way to sweetness, and years of accumulation are finally bearing fruit.

Color4 has finally reached the starting line closest to its dream.

Fei Yue suddenly felt a tremendous sense of release from the inside out.

He leaned back in the leather chair in his office and laughed. After he finished laughing, he wiped away his tears.

The group he had created had finally made it.

Go on. Take flight.

Go to the future you deserve.

Fei Yue put the unexpected incident to rest as quickly as he could.

As a result, when Gu Zhijing, an expert internet surfer, went online, he didn't notice anything wrong at first. He only felt that the mood on his feed seemed a little off today.

Fans in the super topic were all shedding tears.

The debut documentary pinned to Color4's official Weibo account was being reposted again. Everyone reposted it several times, crying as they did so and regretting not having met Color4 sooner.

Gu Zhijing: "?"

Well, there was no need for that.

They hadn't even debuted that long ago.

He had always been a master at combating fandom melodrama. Before he could figure out what had happened, he saw his feed flooded with all kinds of quotes meant to tug at fans' heartstrings. His curiosity was piqued, so he scrolled some more.

The sentimental fans were digging through old material, including the month-end evaluation videos on Site X.

Meanwhile, the career-focused fans had already begun calling on everyone to keep boosting the charts, determined to get Color4's debut song as high a ranking as possible on the music show platforms.

First place was out of the question, of course.

First place was basically reserved for the wildly popular group Shooter, and behind Shooter were singers and groups who had debuted earlier and were better known than Color4.

But the fans had no fixed goal, and it didn't matter exactly where they ended up.

They only wanted Color4 to stand a little higher, so that more people could see them and they wouldn't return to the days when they were unknown and gathering dust. That would be enough.

After reviewing the whole incident, Gu Zhijing couldn't help but sigh.

The beautiful, strong, and tragic image was an enduring way to attract fans, no matter how many years passed.

After Color4's sudden surge in popularity, new work naturally followed.

The first offers came from several relatively obscure magazines that had spent recent years making money by milking fans.

Then came promotional appearances for some more niche, lesser-known brands.

There were fewer opportunities to gain exposure, such as variety shows, OSTs, and major endorsements.

That made sense too.

After all, they had only just begun to show signs of rising, and no one knew how long the popularity would last. Businesses naturally had to take that into account when making their choices.

So aside from businesses looking to make a quick buck, the others were still watching and waiting and wouldn't make a decision so soon.