Chapter 43

Jiang Yu: "...?"

So-

What was the relationship between those two?

What was their relationship?

Lying under the covers, Gu Zhijing fought off sleep as he scrolled through Weibo, deftly reposting, commenting, liking, and calling his idol "gege" in one seamless routine.

An idol and a girlfriend fan who had successfully made private contact with him, of course.

He thought happily, with a touch of guilt.

He had originally wanted to save a few pictures.

Unfortunately, his entire feed tonight was full of repost giveaways celebrating the win. No one was editing pictures or thirsting over his looks.

It seemed tonight was destined to be a carnival for career fans.

As Gu Zhijing scrolled, he received a text.

A message sent this late at night was most likely from a sasaeng.

He had been about to delete it and block the sender, but when he saw the contact name, he paused and glanced at the message.

A single, simple word.

Congratulations.

It was from his older sister.

Gu Zhijing paused for a second.

He had been gone for so long that the Gu Family's presence had grown faint, so faint that it had almost disappeared from his life.

But looking back now,

he still felt that his decision to leave without hesitation had been the right one.

He wondered if the Gu Family had ever regretted it afterward.

Even if they had, it was no use.

With a tap of his fingertip, Gu Zhijing quickly deleted the text.

Once he climbed a little higher, all the way to the top of the entertainment industry, he would let them go on regretting it.

After deleting the message, Gu Zhijing closed his eyes for a moment to collect himself and decided to go straight to sleep.

Unexpectedly, a second before he turned off his phone, he received a Weibo notification that scared all the sleepiness out of him.

#Color4's new album suspected of plagiarism?!

Author's note: #Brother Fei doesn't know what this drunken night has cost him

A moment of silence for him (x)

This chapter is too short. I'll write another one after dinner qvq

Thanks to the little angels who gave me nutrient solution: Sweet and Sour Fish and T#T*^O^*, one bottle each;

Smooch!

Chapter 44

"What's going on-?"

"Who the fuck is spreading rumors about us again?!"

Early the next morning, in the van.

As soon as Gu Zhijing told them the news, Jiang Yu puffed up like an angry blowfish.

Xu Linyuan, on the other hand, seemed to be taking it well. "How does that saying go? Fame brings trouble. Look on the bright side."

He pressed his palms together and bowed slightly, looking like a compassionate Buddha. "This means we're really famous."

"So what if we're famous? Does being famous mean we have to put up with this?"

Jiang Yu cursed as he refreshed the updates. "Fuck, I used to think fans saying things like 'whose way are our geges blocking now?' were just making up bullshit to make themselves feel persecuted."

"Now it looks like it might actually be fucking true!"

"It's not quite a matter of blocking anyone's way."

Gu Zhijing leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples. "But someone definitely stepped in to steer the narrative."

After seeing the notification in the early hours, he had barely slept all night. Now he was sleepy, exhausted, and dazed.

Beside him, Sheng Chi handed him a whole sleeve of cookies.

Gu Zhijing groggily took one and ate it. Finally, he recovered a little and went over the whole story for them.

To start at the beginning,

this was a world war set off by a fan war.

It had all started several days ago, when they had competed with Wei Ming for first place.

The first place that had almost been in his grasp had been snatched away.

For fans obsessed with being top, it was an outright humiliation.

And so a grudge had formed between the two fandoms.

The other side's fans had provoked them repeatedly, but the Vegetable Girls were good-tempered and had put up with it all.

Unexpectedly, the two sides had crossed paths again at the CMJ Music Awards.

Light had helped bring in a banner and hung it in a corner.

But Wei Ming's fans thought it had taken their spot. They also thought that since a flop group like Color4 couldn't even get tickets for its official fan club, its fans had no right to ask someone else to bring in a banner.

That was just picking a fight over nothing.

But the Vegetable Girls had been waiting for the award results and couldn't be bothered with them, so they had put up with it again.

In the end, Color4 had taken home the New Star of the Year award, while Wei Ming had gone home empty-handed.

How could his fans not be angry?

What did they do about it?

Naturally, they cursed the opposing fandom to vent.

First, they dug up a pile of Color4's stale old dirt and trivial incidents.

But unexpectedly, Color4 really didn't have much dirt to dig up.

So after looking for faults, they simply accused a song on Color4's album of plagiarizing the concept of a single Wei Ming had released last year and demanded that Color4 apologize to their senior.

That made three times.

This time, even the gods themselves wouldn't have put up with it.

Color4 had won an award, and everyone had been happily reposting and holding giveaways to celebrate today. Why did they have to come along and spoil it?

So the sharp-tongued Vegetable Girls cursed them right back.

[That's enough. Are you ever going to stop? Your fave must be the origin of the universe, huh?]

[You bring up his seniority every time. The way you lord it over others is like an old man deliberately falling in the street and accusing young people to extort money from them. Bah.]

"Up to that point, it was just a small fan spat. On such a happy day, the fans didn't want the public feed to be an ugly mess of mutual attacks."

"But at two in the morning, someone suddenly paid for smear articles all over the internet and threw in a negative trending search for us."

At that, Gu Zhijing lowered his peach-blossom eyes and gave a chilly laugh. "It happened so fast. I really don't believe it wasn't deliberate."

The positive trending search the company had bought yesterday for Color4's New Star Group of the Year award hadn't stayed up long before it was quickly pushed aside by the negative one.

At two in the morning, there weren't many fans around to control the situation.

As a result, by the time everyone woke up, the negative topic had shot to the top of the trending searches. Underneath it, paid posters who had long since been arranged were steering the narrative and rushing to smear them.

What a disgusting tactic.

The van door suddenly opened.

Yu Wenwen climbed in, closed the door, and said to the driver, "Everyone's here. Let's go."

As she spoke, she handed over a large bag. "Breakfast is here. Share it out."

"Morning, Sister Yu."

Xu Linyuan looked behind her. "Where's Brother Fei?"

"He drank too much yesterday and still hasn't woken up from his hangover. I'll be in charge of you today."

Yu Wenwen handed each of them a bag of soy milk. "I heard what you were talking about. Don't worry. There's no hard evidence; it's all rumors. They won't hold up."

"The company predicted this would blow up into a fight sooner or later when you were competing for first place. It's normal. Don't worry about it. The company has a plan ready and will handle it."

"You guessed it back then?"

Jiang Yu paused, curious. "But if his fandom picked a fight with ours, wouldn't that be beneath them?"

Yu Wenwen hadn't expected him to know the rules of fandom so well. She laughed. "Fortunes change. Things are different now."

"Losing first place already dealt his fandom a heavy blow, and he didn't win an award last night either. If his studio doesn't do something, all his fans will leave."

"After all, the fans he attracted were obsessed with being top. Now it's backfired on him."

Using a fan war to retain fans was a pretty low tactic, but it really worked.

That way, fans could redirect all their disappointment and resentment over their fave not winning an award toward the other side.

"But I think,"

Gu Zhijing said slowly, biting the straw in his soy milk, "someone else probably helped fan the flames too, right?"

After all, Wei Ming didn't compete with them much for resources, and they followed different paths.

A small-scale spat was one thing, meant to retain fans, but once it hit the trending searches and entered the public eye, that was different.

Buying this trending search could easily backfire, making it not worth the cost.

If Wei Ming's company had initially only wanted to direct its fans' resentment elsewhere,

then another party had surely used it as a weapon from behind the scenes.

Yu Wenwen only smiled and said no more on the subject. "Eat up. Don't think so much."

"There are so many competitors in the industry. Who knows which one did it?"

Jiang Yu slumped in his seat. "Fine. The entertainment industry is really complicated."

Xu Linyuan chimed in beside him, "The waters in the entertainment industry run deep."

Gu Zhijing sighed too. "The entertainment industry is really cruel."

Only Sheng Chi frowned. After listening from beginning to end, he still hadn't heard the key point. "Which song are they saying plagiarized his?"

Gu Zhijing answered him, "'Customized Heart-Fluttering.'"

Sheng Chi thought for a moment and remembered it.

"Customized Heart-Fluttering" was a sweet little love song for girlfriend fans.

The concept was a perfect boyfriend customized for you and heart-fluttering moments just for you.

It was a very common concept.

Sheng Chi thought for a while but still couldn't figure out how the other side's fans had managed to accuse it of plagiarism.

"To calm the fans down, the company will issue a statement condemning the rumor-mongers. They're also suppressing the trending search."

Yu Wenwen added, "This song isn't the lead single. It was originally prepared for future concerts, and I don't think there'll be any chance to perform it soon. Once the buzz dies down, everything will be fine."

Most casual onlookers only had a three-second memory.

Once they released a statement and pushed the trending search down some more, this would soon blow over.

The four members of Color4 nodded in agreement and didn't take it too much to heart.

But who could have expected plans to fall behind events?

During the recording of the fifth episode of Starlight Show, Color4 and Light advanced smoothly with the highest combined vote total.

After saying goodbye to the four eliminated groups, they moved on to the live random draw for the next round's groupings.

Color4 was drawn into group three.

On the big screen, the performance theme for group three was slowly revealed.

The host said, "Congratulations! The theme our group three drew is 'Fall in Love with Me.' It looks like this will be a classic love-song stage. I wonder how our two idol groups will present it?"

Color4: "..."

Their group's luck.

It really was something else.

Author's note: #Every member of Color4 has terrible gacha luck.

I've explained TOP cancer before. It refers to fandoms that have to compete for first in everything, have to be first at everything, and feel uncomfortable if they don't get first.

Chapter 45

Color4's terrible luck didn't end there.

The production team had very thoughtfully given them a buy-one-get-one-free deal.

Not only had they assigned them the theme they least wanted to draw, they had also thrown in the opponent they least wanted to face under that theme-Comet.

Comet was one of the boy groups that had invited Color4 to team up during the previous round's battle of the century, when three groups had competed for the Vegetables.

They had five members, the standard boy-group lineup, and before Color4's debut, they had been the most popular permanent group in the domestic entertainment industry.

And the worst part was,

ever since their debut, their signature style had been the nation's boyfriends.

As soon as the draw results came out, they couldn't suppress their smiles. Though they remained polite and restrained on the surface, and even said very formally during the trash-talk segment that since they hadn't managed to become teammates last time, they would be opponents this time instead,

they started cheering as soon as they got offstage in private and went to celebrate in advance.

Color4, watching their backs as they celebrated: "..."

Jiang Yu couldn't help muttering, "Aren't they looking down on us a little too much?"

The competition hadn't even happened yet.

Why were they already cheering?

"Everyone knows Comet's had a boyfriend style since they debuted."

Xu Linyuan said, "Drawing a stage like this is like correctly guessing the essay prompt on the college entrance exam. Who wouldn't be happy?"

Gu Zhijing nodded helplessly. "They're playing on home turf. I'd be happy too."

"What do we do now?"

He paused, lowering his voice a little for his next words. "The plagiarism issue probably only just dropped off the trending searches. From what Sister Yu said before, it'd be best not to perform this song anytime soon, either."

Besides, even without the plagiarism issue, they hadn't originally planned to perform the song.

Their first album had six songs in total. They'd filmed music videos for the two title tracks and prepared stage performances for two others.

Of the remaining two, one was a ballad that didn't need any stage blocking.

The other was Customized Heart-Fluttering, which they'd planned to save for its concert debut. Before this, they'd also...