After finishing his meal, Cheng Che lay down on the sofa and took out his phone.
Jiang Xue and her aunt Cheng Yulan were tidying up in the kitchen, while Zhou Lan helped wipe the table.
Cheng Jianguo and Xu Chengjun sat at the dining table, each with a cup of tea, chatting about the cultural and creative store after the New Year.
"We need to get a new batch of goods after the New Year," Cheng Jianguo said with a smile. "Postcards and washi tape sell the fastest, but we can't keep selling the same things all the time; we need to change things up."
Xu Chengjun nodded:
"I looked at a few suppliers. One made embroidered bookmarks; the quality was good, and the price was reasonable. Another made handmade notebooks using Dongba paper, which was quite unique."
"Dongba paper?" Cheng Jianguo's interest was piqued. "How much does it cost?"
The two started doing the math, their voices low, but you could hear them occasionally throwing out numbers.
Cheng Che leaned back on the sofa, listening to these words, and felt very at ease.
My aunt Cheng Yulan and uncle Xu Chengjun now live in the old house that used to belong to the Cheng family.
After the cultural and creative store opened, Cheng Jianguo rented the old house to them without charging them any money.
Xu Chengjun felt bad and said he would deduct it from his earnings, but Cheng Jianguo said he would deduct it from their share of the profits, since they weren't short of money anyway.
Cheng Che would send money home whenever he had a spare moment, telling them to spend it and not to be stingy.
With this arrangement, Xu Qian no longer needs to live on campus.
Although the neighborhood is a bit old, the location of the old house is good; it's close to her school, only a ten-minute walk away.
The little girl goes home to stay every day, and Cheng Yulan can cook for her, which is much better than the school cafeteria.
The cultural and creative products store is doing well.
Even though Cheng Che's era of using Douyin) for traffic generation is over, he still earns tens of thousands of yuan every month.
For Cheng Yulan and Xu Chengjun, this was a large sum of money.
They used to work in a factory, earning only about 10,000 yuan a month. Now their wages have doubled, and they live a much more comfortable life than before.
Xu Qian sat next to Cheng Che and nudged him with her elbow.
"Elder brother."
"Um."
"The final episode of Youth Here ' airs tonight."
Cheng Che paused for a moment while scrolling through his phone.
How many episodes?
"The last two episodes start at eight o'clock," Xu Qian said. "Let's watch them together."
Cheng Che then realized that the TV series he was filming was about to end.
It's not that he wasn't paying attention.
On the day " The Youth Here " premiered, he posted a Weibo.
Later, Qin Lie would send him the daily playback data.
But he didn't look at it much himself.
It's so embarrassing to watch myself act.
He knew what would happen in the next second, from every expression and every line of dialogue.
For others, watching TV is enjoyable; for him, it's torture.
"No," he said. "You'll see."
Xu Qian's face fell. "Why? This was your acting!"
"I don't watch it precisely because of my acting."
Xu Qian glared at him for two seconds, then jumped up from the sofa and ran to the kitchen to find Jiang Xue.
Cheng Che heard her whisper a few words to Jiang Xue, and then Jiang Xue's voice came through.
"Of course I'm watching! It's my son's TV series, I have to support him."
Cheng Che covered his face.
Jiang Xue came out of the kitchen, her hands still wet, and skillfully picked up the remote control to turn on the internet TV.
The homepage features a large banner recommending " The Youth Here," with a huge "Explosive" sign above it, and below that, in smaller print. "The finale airs tonight at 8 PM, exclusively online."
"Look, it's on the homepage." Jiang Xue's tone was filled with pride. "It's a show my son acted in, that's impressive."
Cheng Jianguo and Xu Chengjun stopped talking about business and came over with their teacups.
Cheng Qingshan and Zhou Lan sat on the sofa next to them, and Zhou Lan even put on her reading glasses.
Cheng Yulan brought out a plate of sliced fruit from the kitchen and placed it on the coffee table.
Cheng Che stood up to leave, but Jiang Xue pressed him back onto the sofa.
"Sit down."
He glared fiercely at Xu Qian.
Xu Qian made a face, then snuggled into Jiang Xue and settled into a comfortable position.
Eight o'clock sharp.
Jiang Xue pressed play on the last two episodes.
When the screen lit up, Cheng Che had already closed his eyes. But all he could hear were the voices of his family.
"Who is this actress? She's really beautiful." This is Zhou Lan.
" Wen Zhiyi has exceptional acting skills." This was Jiang Xue, who had somehow already researched Wen Zhiyi's background.
" Cheche looks so good in her school uniform." This is Cheng Yulan.
"He wasn't nearly this handsome in high school." This was Cheng Jianguo's statement, his tone carrying an air of self-assurance that "of course my son is handsome."
Cheng Che closed his eyes, listened to these sounds, and his lips twitched slightly.
Across the country, countless people are sitting in front of their screens, just like him.
In the back-end data monitoring room of Tengda Video, the on-duty technicians stared at the numbers jumping on the screen, their palms sweating profusely.
At 8:00 AM sharp, the first second the finale went live, the number of concurrent viewers reached 15 million.
Five minutes later, it surpassed 20 million.
Ten minutes later, the data was still rising.
The CTO stood in front of the screen, staring at the almost vertically upward curve, and turned to his assistant, saying, "Go and call President Zhao."
President Zhao arrived very quickly.
He pushed open the door to the monitoring room, glanced at the data on the screen, and froze for a moment.
How much is it now?
"Twenty-eight million. And it's still rising."
President Zhao stared at the number, his hand clenching into a fist. Thirty-five million, forty million, forty-five million.
When the Iconic Moment from the finale aired, the number of online viewers jumped to 50 million.
That was a shot of Cheng Che and Wen Zhiyi looking at each other across the railway tracks.
The high-speed train passed between the two of them, the wind blowing Cheng Che's clothes up, their shadows overlapping on the train window for a fleeting moment.
The live chat exploded.
President Zhao stared at the upward-trending curve on the screen, his hands trembling with excitement.
He turned around and shouted something to everyone in the monitoring room.
"Broken! All records are broken!!!"
A cheer erupted in the monitoring room.
President Zhao a deep breath, took out his phone, and dialed a number. After the call was connected, he only said one sentence.
" Old Zhou, your show is a huge hit."
In the twelfth-floor apartment of that new residential complex in Spring City, the living room was quiet and peaceful.
Everyone was glued to the screen. The high-speed train had passed.
The two looked at each other across the railway tracks. Cheng Che smiled, Wen Zhiyi smiled too.
Xu Qian's eyes reddened.
Zhou Lan took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
Cheng Yulan sniffed. Jiang Xue's eyes sparkled. Cheng Jianguo pretended to look at his phone, but the screen remained black.
Cheng Che sat between them, looking at his own face on the screen, feeling so embarrassed he wanted to dig his toes into the ground.
But he didn't move.
Because Jiang Xue's hand was on his shoulder, Zhou Lan's handkerchief was waiting beside him, and Xu Qian's tears were already falling.
He sighed, leaned back on the sofa, and watched the high-speed rail station on the screen recede into the distance as the end credits rolled.
The finale of " The Youth Here ".