After dragging his suitcase more than eight hundred meters on foot, Xie Zhuzhou finally arrived at the dating show's filming location, a vintage European-style villa.
He wore the NPC outfit of a random college guy on the street. Tall and slender, dressed in a mix of black, gray, and white, he slipped into the crowd while everyone was busy. Even his exceptionally handsome face was hidden beneath the shadow of his baseball cap.
Even so, a staff member spotted him and ran over to ask whether he was the new male guest.
Xie Zhuzhou nodded.
I'm this dating show's rising background character, he thought.
The story began with his previous life.
In his previous life, Xie Zhuzhou had been a sickly young master born to a marquis's concubine. His birth mother had died early, and he had lived in seclusion since childhood, in a remote courtyard. Apart from the accountant who delivered his monthly allowance and a few personal manservants, almost no one in the household remembered he existed.
His long, lonely life had ended with a bout of illness from a chill at twenty. Yet, for some unknown reason, he had transmigrated into the bizarre world of a novel about a real and fake young master, and the contents of that story had appeared in his mind.
In the language of later generations, he was now a nameless extra in a novel who should have died without ever having his name mentioned.
After transmigrating, Xie Zhuzhou discovered that the original owner was little different from him in his previous life.
The original owner was an illegitimate son of a wealthy family, a peripheral figure. Before he was born, his biological father and his first wife had long since divorced.
His biological parents had conceived him during a one-night stand, which left him in an awkward position. His parents were never going to marry just because they had him.
Later, when he was five, his mother had settled abroad, found someone she loved, and started a new family.
The Ji Family had taken charge of him and settled him in a villa, where a nanny and a driver had looked after him until adulthood. He had also taken his mother's surname, Xie, with the given name Zhuzhou.
The original owner had lived a fairly comfortable life, and currently had no other siblings making trouble for him.
Although their living circumstances had been similar, the original owner had been far better off than him in both outlook and health.
As for the original owner's love life, Xie Zhuzhou thought it was quite spectacular.
He was a face-con and had been pursuing three men at once: first, his university's aloof campus heartthrob; second, a hot-tempered professional esports champion; and third, a racing driver who was very famous in the country.
Their social circles did not overlap. Although all three disliked the original owner, he was not pursuing just one person, so he had plenty of fun and enjoyed the chase, never tiring of it.
Someone who loved life so much was merely an extra who did not even deserve a name in a novel where someone else was the protagonist.
In the original novel, the original owner had died suddenly at his computer the night before joining the dating show, after several days of going to classes during the day and gaming all night without sleeping properly.
Xie Zhuzhou himself did not want to join the dating show, but faced with the hefty breach-of-contract penalty, he, who had lived as a freeloader in both lifetimes, could not bear to pay even if he could afford it. After all, the main family had stopped sending money once he came of age, and both he and the original owner understood that they could not simply live off their savings forever.
After his death, the vicious male supporting character, the popular celebrity and fake young master Wen Nan, would parachute into the show.
Now that he was alive, would the plot go off track?
But that was hardly his fault.
Once the fake young master Wen Nan decided to parachute in, his screen time had to be reduced, and the production team's one million would effectively go down the drain. That was why they had spoken to the original owner over the phone: he only needed to stick to his background-character role, without stealing scenes or adding any. They had originally offered him one million because, first, filming would take a long time, and second, the original owner was extremely good-looking.
In short, the revised script suited him perfectly.
"Mr. Xie, are you feeling unwell?" Xie Zhuzhou came back to himself, a flicker of chagrin crossing his clear eyes. He was surprised he had actually zoned out in front of someone.
Sure enough, letting his mind run away from home was one way to escape reality.
"No, sorry. The broadcast starts tomorrow, right?"
"Yes. Today is Friday, so we're doing a trial broadcast first. Don't be nervous. Just go into the living room and say hello to everyone, then you can do your own thing."
"All right, thank you."
The female staff member responsible for guiding the guests flushed and hurriedly waved her hands. "N-no problem." The male guest before her was incredibly handsome, yet dressed so unobtrusively.
After thanking the staff member, Xie Zhuzhou turned to leave, his steps a little unsteady while his face maintained a pretense of composure.
A variety show with people constantly coming and going truly terrified him, but compared with the penalty... he made the effort to go inside.
He swallowed, tried to steady himself, and walked at an unhurried pace into the spacious living room, where there were only a few people.
A statuesque, dazzlingly fair-skinned woman stood on the spiral staircase. She was the top singer Xuelai, and she was heading upstairs.
A handsome man with regular, striking features stood in the open kitchen. Xie Zhuzhou did not know him; the director had not given him information on the other guests.
There was one other particularly conspicuous person in the living room. Wearing a sharply cut black jacket, he sat cross-legged on the sofa, leafing through a magazine with his long fingers. He had an overbearing air, and his handsome face practically had "keep away" written across it.
Although everyone was doing their own thing, the livestream had already begun.
He quickened his steps. Better a short pain than a long one.
"Hello, everyone. My name is Xie Zhuzhou. I'm happy to be here."
He forced up the stiff corners of his mouth and braced himself to greet the camera. The director gave him only three seconds of screen time; the livestream viewers did not even get a clear look at his whole face.
Before the audience could react, the camera abruptly swung away. A handsome man with delicate features had suddenly appeared at the door. He was the hottest topic online lately: a single appearance on the subway had been shared wildly across the internet, after which he had signed with a film emperor's company.
Xie Zhuzhou secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Good. I can take this chance to avoid greeting anyone.
After all, according to the plot, wherever the protagonist shou Wen Ruohuai appeared, everyone around him paled in comparison. So Xie Zhuzhou withdrew first.
Carrying his suitcase, Xie Zhuzhou went into lurker mode and climbed the stairs. Following the staff's directions, he found room 305.
The doorframe was an elegant white, and the door had a keypad lock.
He entered the numbers a little awkwardly. After a beep, the door unlocked automatically, and he pushed it open with one hand and stepped inside, a hint of unease in his gait.
He had heard that the production team livestreamed through separate camera feeds, so there were probably cameras in the rooms too.
After looking around the room, Xie Zhuzhou successfully located a not particularly well-hidden camera beside the curtains.
There was absolutely no privacy.
It made him feel suffocated. Even with the original owner's memories, he could not adjust to it so quickly.
After all, just the day before, he had still been lying on an antique-style couch, and today he had arrived in a strange world. With such enormous differences in food, clothing, housing, and transportation, how was he any different from an Earthling who had wandered onto an alien planet?
Xie Zhuzhou set down his luggage.
After opening the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, he discovered that the balcony was a secluded spot.
It was already the cool autumn season, and school had started over a month ago.
Resting both hands on the balcony railing, he felt a tangle of emotions. In truth, his excitement outweighed his fear.
Skyscrapers soaring into the clouds, endless streams of traffic... he had seen all these things on the ride here. Compared with the original owner's hazy memories, the impact of seeing them for real had left him so stiff-faced that he had not even known what expression to make.
He only remembered nearly forgetting to pay the driver when he got out at his destination.
After the driver's reminder, he had awkwardly and hastily scanned the payment code and transferred the money, so embarrassed that he wanted to flee.
The splendor of later generations truly was astonishing.
Just then, he heard a commotion downstairs. Was someone fighting?
In the original novel, after the real and fake young masters met on the dating show, their sarcastic barbs had nearly led to blows.
He had not died, yet the fake young master was still parachuting in? The power of the plot really could not be underestimated.
Since the official filming began tomorrow anyway, why not rest today?
Having made a sensible arrangement for himself, Xie Zhuzhou returned to his room, closed the glass doors, and neatly draped the decorative white lace cloth from the armchair over the camera two meters above the floor.
Seeing that the camera was completely covered, Xie Zhuzhou looked down at his long, delicate hands and could not help marveling at how... strong this body was.
In his previous life, he had needed someone to attend to everything because of his poor health. Although the principal wife had ignored him, she had not mistreated him.
Slow on the uptake and far too nervous, Xie Zhuzhou only now realized that he had needed no one to look after him throughout the journey here. He had even managed to carry his suitcase a long way!
Having a body free of that heavy burden felt incredible!
Upstairs, Xie Zhuzhou went to sleep fully dressed without pulling a blanket over himself, intending to calm his excitement with an afternoon nap.
He did not know that downstairs, the chaos had given way to a silence in which even a silver needle dropping could have been heard.
"Wen Nan, I don't provoke you, and I hope you won't provoke me either. I'll let today's incident go. You'd better watch yourself." After speaking with a cold expression, Wen Ruohuai pulled his hand out of his assistant's arms.
"Heh, give you a little face and you start thinking you're somebody!" After Wen Nan made another snide remark, the staff, worried that the two men with their sleeves already rolled up would really fight, hurriedly pulled them apart.
Because of their argument, the director had temporarily shut down the livestream.
Backstage, the director smoked a cigarette and drew a deep breath.
He knew nothing about the Wen Family's affairs, so naturally he did not know that the two were the real and fake young masters, much less why Wen Nan had suddenly squeezed his way onto the show.
He only felt that once he finished this cigarette, Love 5 would have no shortage of talking points or traffic.
This livestream incident was certain to cause an uproar before the night was out. Many people would be curious who could have such a bitter feud with the usually reserved Wen Nan that he could not resist falling out with them even on a show.
Although he could not understand what the two were making snide remarks about, that would not stop the show from continuing. No one had said they would stop filming, after all.