Early the next morning, Song Shi'an was having a wonderful dream.
In his dream, he had finished playing a hundred cannon fodder roles, and the ten billion in assets the system had promised him had arrived. He was standing in a vault, stuffing banknotes into burlap sacks, stack after stack, with no end in sight.
Then a clattering racket dragged him bodily out of the vault.
He opened his eyes groggily, threw back the covers, climbed out of bed barefoot, and pushed open his bedroom door to look downstairs.
Seven or eight people had arrived in the living room. Some were moving equipment, others were setting up lights, all of them bustling away at full tilt.
At the noise upstairs, several of them looked up in unison.
Song Shi'an leaned against the second-floor railing, the collar of his silk pajamas slightly open, several tufts of hair sticking up from sleep. With his eyes still hazy from not being fully awake, he looked down at them from above.
He tilted his head, his expression saying, "Who are you, and why are you in my house?"
Standing downstairs, Ji Shuyao fell silent for a second at the sight, then coughed twice with an expressionless face and turned to the people beside him. "Get everything set up first."
Then he looked up at Song Shi'an again. "Go get yourself cleaned up. The stylist will work on your look in a bit."
Only then did Song Shi'an come to his senses. He nodded. "Okay." He turned and went back to his bedroom.
The moment he left, the stylist grabbed Ji Shuyao's arm, his voice trembling. "Brother Yao, where did you dig him up? He's ridiculously handsome! When I saw his photos online, I thought they must have been Photoshopped a little, but how did they even take those photos? They don't look half as good as he does in person!"
Ji Shuyao pulled his arm free. "You'll get used to it. Do a good job styling him. If the response is good, you'll move up in status right along with him."
Hearing that, the stylist was instantly fired up.
He turned toward the closed door on the second floor, fierce fighting spirit blazing in his eyes.
Today, Song Shi'an had to be the best-looking guy around. Nobody could change that, no matter who showed up.
Song Shi'an washed up in the bathroom. Seeing his hair sticking up in the mirror, he casually pressed it down a couple of times. One tuft stubbornly refused to lie flat, so he gave up and walked out.
The moment he opened the door, there was Ji Shuyao standing outside.
Song Shi'an nearly launched straight into the air, springing half a step backward. "Brother Yao, at least make a sound!"
Ji Shuyao's expression didn't change. "You were in the bathroom so long, I thought you'd fallen down the toilet."
"My hair's gotten a little unruly after sleeping." Song Shi'an touched the stubborn cowlick at the back of his head.
Ji Shuyao glanced at his watch. "It's getting late. Go get styled first."
Song Shi'an blinked. "Doesn't it start at seven tonight? It's not even ten yet. At least let me have breakfast before we keep going."
Ji Shuyao pressed a hand to his forehead. "Do you think styling is something you can finish in an hour or two?"
As it turned out, Ji Shuyao was right. For the next six full hours, Song Shi'an was kept planted in a chair, endlessly changing outfits and having his hair done.
Makeup was actually the easiest part. His face had hardly any imperfections. The makeup artist held a powder puff up in front of him, deliberating for ages, before finally just adding a little color to his lips and calling it done.
When the makeup artist put down the brush, they sighed and said, "That face is an insult to my career."
Song Shi'an felt as though he was about to shrivel up from hunger. While the stylist went to fetch accessories, he secretly gestured at Ji Shuyao, meaning, "Anything to eat?"
Ji Shuyao handed him a cup of coffee.
Looking at that cup of coffee, Song Shi'an nearly dropped dead on the spot.
He'd been hungry all day, and now he was supposed to drink coffee in the evening? His stomach had already started digesting itself.
"Brother Yao, isn't this a bit much? I'm just joining a livestream call, not walking a runway," Song Shi'an said.
Before Ji Shuyao could answer, Song Shi'an had already charged into the kitchen in his fully finished look.
The stylist called after him, "Watch your clothes!" He didn't even turn around.
He dug a packet of instant noodles out of a cupboard, boiled water, added the noodles, and cracked in an egg, his movements flowing like clouds and water.
He was wearing a gentle upperclassman-style outfit, a light-colored knit cardigan over a white T-shirt. The stylist had made his hair fluffy and natural, and he looked like a white moonlight male lead who had stepped straight out of a campus drama.
And now this white moonlight male lead was standing in the open kitchen, stirring instant noodles with chopsticks.
Ji Shuyao watched him and sighed helplessly. Forget it. The kid's still growing. Let him do what he wants.
He took out his phone, snapped a photo of Song Shi'an stirring noodles with his back turned, and sent it to Shen Lingshu with the caption, "Your artist is eating instant noodles."
Shen Lingshu replied instantly, "Let him eat."
By six thirty that evening, all the lights and livestreaming equipment in the living room were set up.
Sitting on the sofa, Song Shi'an looked curiously at the professional fill lights and audio equipment in front of him, thinking that this setup was even more formal than when he filmed.
At seven sharp, he was added to a group video call.
Several small windows instantly appeared on the screen, with Xu Yanzhi at the top and the other lead actors arranged in order. He was at the very edge.
The viewers had long been waiting. As the actors joined one after another, bullet comments flew across the screen, fans cheering for their favorites as the likes shot upward.
Then Song Shi'an's window lit up.
The bullet comments instantly vanished.
About two seconds later, they began scrolling wildly like a flash flood bursting forth, so fast that only a blur of white remained on the screen.
The host spoke then, an unmistakable smile in their voice. "Let's welcome our final guest, the one everyone's been paying so much attention to-Meng Zhen!"
Song Shi'an smiled and waved at the camera. "Hello, everyone. I'm Song Shi'an, and I play Meng Zhen. It's a pleasure to meet you all."
The bullet comments went completely wild.
"Holy beans, Song Shi'an in the flesh!! I thought they'd Photoshopped him separately in the promo!!!"
"Help, he doesn't even look like he's on the same layer!!!"
"What exactly did heaven forget when it made him!!!"
"What kind of earthly beauty is this knit cardigan? I'm straight-up panting!!"
"How does he look this good just sitting on a sofa? This defies science!!"
The bullet comments flew by so quickly that Song Shi'an couldn't make out a single word, so he gave up and sat there smiling.
The host began warming things up, steering the conversation toward Xu Yanzhi and the other leads, discussing amusing incidents during filming and their insights into their roles.
Song Shi'an occasionally chimed in with a few words, but mostly sat quietly to the side, nodding and smiling now and then.
He figured he was only there to make up the numbers, and all he needed to do was quietly serve as a backdrop.
But the bullet comments thought nothing of the sort. Every time the camera switched to his little window, another wave surged across the screen.
Even when he said nothing and merely lowered his head to glance at his hands, the comments could fill an entire row with "He's looking at his hands!! His hands are so pretty!!!"
Over the course of a livestream lasting just two hours, Song Shi'an gained more than three hundred thousand followers on Weibo.
The other leads already had plenty of followers, and their numbers rose steadily, but his growth curve was practically riding a rocket.
There were also lots of casual fans asking in his Super Topic, "Who is this Song Shi'an? How is he so good-looking? Can someone fill me in?"
When the livestream ended, Song Shi'an breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back against the sofa.
Ji Shuyao came over. "How was it? Getting used to it?"
Song Shi'an stood up and rolled his shoulders. "I couldn't make out what the bullet comments were saying at all, but it was okay. Luckily, there wasn't much for me to do. I said fewer than ten sentences the whole time."
"Check your D Station dashboard."
Song Shi'an picked up his phone and opened it, then froze.
His follower count on the dashboard had gone up by another four hundred thousand-plus, and the number on the red notification badge in his message list had grown too large to display in full.
He stared at that number for a long while, then looked up at Ji Shuyao, his expression sincere and regretful. "If only that were yuan."