CH 29

Chapter 29 – Fault Tolerance Rate

he fault tolerance rate in this circle is close to zero

Fang Juexia woke up in an instant and immediately released his hand.

“Everyone in Kaleido, hurry back! Hey! Over there! Quickly move the props over here!”

“Okay!”

“Is this the prop?”

The group members evacuated the platform one after another, and the noisy environment caused Fang Juexia’s heart to quake violently in his chest. 

He had actually been holding Pei Tingsong’s hand the entire time.

Aware of this point, Fang Juexia hurriedly made his way off of the platform of the stage lift. Unexpectedly, he tripped over one of the numerous pipes on the ground and fell to the ground unprepared.

“Hey, Fang Juexia, are you ok?”

He could hear the concern carried in Pei Tingsong’s voice, and he also realised through the increasing volume of his voice that Pei Tingsong was drawing closer to him, but Fang Juexia was currently a little flustered. Everything in his vision was fuzzy and dark, and his surroundings were chaotic.

This isn’t the first time— he tried to calm himself down while thinking this.

Don’t panic, don’t panic. He reached out and fumbled around on the ground before managing to feel the pipe running in front of him, and then tried to get up carefully. After standing up steadily, Fang Juexia squinted. There were many dark shadows flashing back and forth in front of him, and he couldn’t make out anything else. 

“What’s the matter with you?” Pei Tingsong immediately noticed that Fang Juexia didn’t seem right and was behaving very strangely. Right now, he just looked like….

The word that flashed unconsciously in his mind gave him a sudden pause.  

Pei Tingsong went up and caught hold of Fang Juexia’s arm. “Do you have night blindness?”

He was also unaware of what was going on, but as soon as he asked that question, Pei Tingsong immediately thought back to that early morning insomnia incident, where Fang Juexia had accidentally knocked over that pile of books. 

How could they have been knocked over? Even if the lights were not turned on, the room wasn’t completely dark.

If he hadn’t walked while supporting himself against the wall, he wouldn’t have hit it.

Yes.

All those irrational details could now be explained. 

The situation when they had been locked up in the closet together came to his mind again. At that time, he had wanted to force Fang Juexia to look at him, but had only received one sentence in return—

[I can’t see.]

He hadn’t lied; he really couldn’t see.

“Yes.” Fang Juexia’s tone while admitting to this was also extremely calm. His mood gradually became tranquil, although he still couldn’t see his surroundings clearly.

The other group members had already walked far away. The dark and crisscrossed passageway, coupled with the staff urging them forward, caused everyone to subconsciously only look in the direction ahead of them, and made it very difficult for them to notice that they had lost some people. Pei Tingsong was very surprised, and thinking back to the way Fang Juexia looked after he had fallen, he even started to inexplicably feel a bit angry. He couldn’t help asking, “Why didn’t you say that you have night blindness?”

As soon as he posed that question, he regretted it. With the cold relationship he had had with Fang Juexia for the past two years, how could this already icy cold person tell him about such a private matter? Even a fool would know that he would not say anything. 

The relationship between them had completely never reached the level of being frank and honest with each other. 

“What’s the matter?” Upon hearing the voice of another staff member come from behind him, Fang Juexia tried to break away from the grip Pei Tingsong’s hand had on him and pretend that nothing had happened.

This reaction of his gave Pei Tingsong a hint.

“Everything’s fine.” Saying this, Pei Tingsong tightened his grip even further, and went to the extent of stretching out his other hand to wrap it around Fang Juexia’s waist. “He came over to find something just now and tripped. You’re busy ba, I’ll help him back.”

“Really? Be careful ah, it’s a bit messy down here.”

After seeing the staff member leave, Pei Tingsong, who was now completely supporting Fang Juexia, drew close to his ear and in a lowered voice, asked— 

“So reluctant to ask me for help?”

As the warm breath drifted across his face, Fang Juexia smiled bitterly in the dark.

Since he had anticipated that Fang Juexia wouldn’t say anything more, Pei Tingsong didn’t expect any response. He simply continued supporting Fang Juexia as they moved forward step-by-step, letting him know in a soft voice when to avoid all kinds of obstacles. Just when he thought that this guy had finally put down his hard shell and compromised to move slowly forward in this darkness , Pei Tingsong suddenly heard his voice. 

“It’s so strange.”

Their steps paused one after the other. 

“Why is it you every time?”

A brief silence fell between them. 

Fang Juexia’s smile looked bleak. Perhaps Pei Tingsong also felt that he was an unlucky star, getting forced into binding himself to him, and then running into him just when he was being menaced by a hidden rules situation. Even the night blindness problem that he had been keeping well-hidden this entire time had been exposed to Pei Tingsong.

Why? Plainly he’d been able to hide this fact well every single time prior to this incident, to the point that he was already used to the dark. 

If, just now, he had still been holding onto that other hand tightly and had not let go of it….

He traced the illusory path of choices offered by this butterfly effect, all the way until his train of thought was broken by Pei Tingsong’s voice. 

“Maybe I spoke too presumptuously on that phone call last time, saying that you and I are bound together.”

“As soon as God heard this, he really tied you and me together.” Pei Tingsong’s voice carried a hint of a smile as he stated, “Maybe God also ships our CP.”

Fang Juexia was stunned by this sudden statement.

What God or not….

“Don’t joke around.” He still tried to escape from Pei Tingsong’s grip on his hands, but the hand wrapped around his waist gripped tighter and tighter instead, and his tone was serious as he said, “Not joking around. I do usually really like to tease you, but I also have a bottom line.”

Fang Juexia glanced at him. “Your bottom line exists somewhere in the third quadrant of a graph.”

When he heard this, Pei Tingsong was stunned at first, and then he burst out laughing, like a high school student.

Fang Juexia’s ears were filled with Pei Tingsong’s bright laughter. It was strange to say, but it felt like his tension simmering in him seemed to have suddenly been relieved. 

Thinking with his emotional side, he even began to consider taking a chance. Maybe he could really trust this demon-in-human-shape, with whom he had just repaired the broken relationship between them, even letting him know his biggest secret.

But his reason admonished him to not so easily give up what he had held onto for such a long time. 

If he knew it, then he knew it ba—Fang Juexia comforted himself. In any case, it had always been his rule in life to be content with whatever happened to him. 

Under these circumstances, he more and more couldn’t learn how to calmly consider things. 

“If it’s in the third quadrant, then it’s in the third quadrant ba.” Pei Tingsong tilted his head at him and said, “It’s better than nothing.”

With his support, Fang Juexia kept moving forward bit by bit. From time to time, his toes would bump into a pipe on the ground, and then he stumbled and tripped, just like the way he had fumbled and groped around in the darkness surrounding his path these past few years. 

Pei Tingsong’s body temperature was very high, and his arms were wrapped around Fang Juexia’s back in order to support his entire person, so Fang Juexia was being heated up and he started to feel a bit uneasy. In the dark, he heard Pei Tingsong’s voice ask, “You…really can’t see anything at all?” He quickly added, “I mean, after things get dark.”

He had very seldomly heard Pei Tingsong talk so hesitantly, in such a manner. This boy, who was three years younger than himself, was always determined and ostentatious, as though there was nothing in life he was afraid of. 

“Basically.” Fang Juexia added a relatively accurate figure. “80 percent.”

Pei Tingsong nodded and repeated his words in a low voice, “80 percent…”

The narrow walkway compressed the surrounding air into a slow flowing viscous fluid. Fang Juexia felt a weak breeze in front of his face, making it seem as if the trajectory of the fluid had changed.

He raised his hand and reached out into the darkness.

Pei Tingsong was stunned, and his footsteps stopped right then and there. He had just stretched his hand out in front of Fang Juexia’s face and waved it in front of him a bit, but Fang Juexia had caught him just like that. 

“Didn’t you say you can’t see?” Pei Tingsong’s tone was a bit surprised and accidentally sounded a little childish as well, just like that of a little kid who got caught doing bad things. 

Once again, a smile appeared at the corner of Fang Juexia’s mouth.

“I really can’t see,” he said, releasing Pei Tingsong’s hand. “But I do have powers of foresight.”

Pei Tingsong let go and also laughed. 

Fang Juexia was indeed much smarter than he had thought.

He pulled Fang Juexia forward and asked, “So, have you been hiding for so long by relying on your powers of foresight?”

Without waiting for Fang Juexia to answer, Pei Tingsong asked, “Why do you want to hide it from everyone? It’s not a very special disorder, and it doesn’t affect other people.”

Fang Juexia knew that he would not understand, and that was very normal. 

He could only explain to him by using his own experience as an example.

“I learned dance, both folk dance and modern dance, for a while as a child. When I was seven years old, my mom took me to the Guangzhou Junior Dance Troupe to take part in the selection process for their seeded dancers. At that time, all the adults told me that I was the child with the best conditions and would definitely be selected.”

Such narration in the beginning always implied that the inverse of it would take place.

“For the last assessment, we went onto a real stage, which wasn’t quite the same as the prior assessments. It was very big, very dark, with only one spotlight.” 

Pei Tingsong understood the situation soon enough; he could pretty much see the events of that scene in front of his eyes. 

A little boy, confused and helpless, standing on a dark stage. 

“You….didn’t get picked?”

“En.” Fang Juexia’s tone was rather flat, as if nothing had happened. He walked forward step by step as he continued, “I tried my best, but I still fell off the stage and even broke my left leg. Only after I went to the hospital that time did everyone realise that I have night blindness.”

“You were very disappointed back then ba?” Pei Tingsong asked. 

“No actually. As soon as I woke up, I asked my mama what the results were. She told me they would send me a message later. After that, there was no such thing.” The corners of Fang Juexia’s mouth helplessly hooked up. “Maybe the adults thought that children don’t remember things, and after a period of time passed, they’d forget. But I have a very good memory. I ate very seriously, recuperated, and was very obedient, thinking that as long as my legs got better, I could join the dance troupe and could become a dancer.”

In the dim light, Pei Tingsong looked at him. There wasn’t much expression on his delicate face, and he really didn’t look like a person who was recalling their past regrets. However, this was Fang Juexia, and all this became reasonable. 

But when he listened to his story, his mind even came up with the image of a child obediently and cleverly recuperating. 

When he was a child….he should have been very good-looking then too ba.

“And then?” Pei Tingsong asked.

“There was no ‘and then’,” Fang Juexia said coldly, “My grandfather told me about the night blindness, so what else could I expect. How could a person with a high probability of going blind on the stage become a dancer?”

Pei Tingsong knew that he should comfort him at this time, but he didn’t know how to comfort him, and all of a sudden, he even started to fumble his words. He could only sigh and say from his heart, “What a pity.”

“It’s not a pity.” Fang Juexia said, “Afterwards, I accidentally heard the adults talking, and only then did I know that even if I didn’t have night blindness, I wouldn’t have been selected.”

Pei Tingsong didn’t understand and asked, “Why?”

Fang Juexia turned his head, glanced at Pei Tingsong through the darkness, raised his finger, and pointed to the corner of his eye as he replied, “Because of this.”

“A dancer can’t have any obvious marks on their face.”

Unlike idols, they didn’t need to be recognized. 

—No matter how beautiful they were.

With just this glance of his, Pei Tingsong’s mood was shaken. He didn’t know what to say, so he just supported him through the last small dark passageway in silence.

Their stages also weren’t completely illuminated, but most of them did have lights. He couldn’t imagine how Fang Juexia managed to never make a single mistake, so that no one could find out that he was different.

Pei Tingsong remembered that when he first entered the company, the first internal legend he had heard was about Fang Juexia. Everyone had said, “Don’t look down upon how StarChart is a small company, there is a trainee practice god inside.” 

The amount of Fang Juexia’s negative news was directly proportional to his well-known level of hard work. Everyone knew that he pretty much lived in the practice room. No matter when you went to the company’s practice room, you would definitely find him, and he would definitely be dancing in there. 

At that time, Pei Tingsong had just felt that all of these things were exaggerated. He didn’t understand why a person, who everyone defined as possessing rare natural talent, should basically utilise basically the intensity of self mutilation to force himself to get better.

Now he understood.

In terms of pursuing his dreams, he counted as being a person who had already failed once. 

He finally understood why Fang Juexia was moved by the opening of that documentary.

No matter in which sense it was, he was in the dark. And in that dark little house, Fang Juexia totally had no way out.

The end of the passage led to the lobby underneath the stage. With the gradually increasing light, Fang Juexia consciously, and slowly, retreated to a safe distance from Pei Tingsong. It was as if he stepped out of the deep sea, and was dragging behind him a trail of heavy footsteps as he returned to dry land. 

“You’re not afraid that maybe one day you’ll fall off the stage, just like how you did when you were a child?”

Hearing Pei Tingsong’s question, Fang Juexia calmly and confidently said, “I’m afraid. So I have to ensure that every move I make is so accurate that there is not a single deviation in terms of distance on the stage.”

Just as he said this, the dim yellow light hit his face, lengthening the shadow of his eyelashes, making them flutter across his cheeks like butterflies.

“The fault tolerance rate in this circle is close to zero, but unfortunately, I was born with the wrong mark, and I was also born as a person who tends to make mistakes.”

He showed Pei Tingsong a cool smile. “I can only work hard to try and pretend that I won’t make any mistakes.”

“Juexia! Xiao Pei!”

Cheng Qiang came running over to them from not far away, and he was panting, as if he had been looking for them for a long time. His appearance interrupted Fang Juexia’s self analysis, and he gathered up his emotions before facing Cheng Qiang.

He also didn’t really understand why he would say so much to Pei Tingsong; he didn’t understand it every time this happened. 

He thought, perhaps Pei Tingsong also felt very puzzled by this, because what reason was there for him to have to listen to all this stuff about his past, and even his heartfelt thoughts on top of it all? Would Pei Tingsong see this as some kind of ploy to ingratiate himself to him by showing weakness? It was a bit like those contestants on talent shows who tearfully spilled their tragic pasts to everyone, using their deceitful tears to enrich their own characters. 

What would Pei Tingsong think of him?

“What are you two doing? I’ve been searching for you guys in circles.” As Cheng Qiang got closer and closer, Fang Juexia considered whether to use the excuse Pei Tingsong had just used to get rid of that staff member. Unexpectedly, he suddenly heard the person beside him speak up. 

“I have one last question for you.”

He looked at Pei Tingsong, a bit puzzled.

Pei Tingsong’s eyes were very sincere as he asked, “How many other people know your secret?”

Fang Juexia’s Adam’s apple rolled as he stared at the person in front of him. But, as though feeling that there wasn’t enough time, Pei Tingsong quickly changed his words before Cheng Qiang could arrive, “Forget it, let me go again.”

Fang Juexia’s slightly raised eyebrows indicated his doubts.

“I’ll go again and say one last thing.”

That young face, which always failed to show any restraint, looked at him, and there was a soft light shining in the depths of his eyes.

“Your birthmark isn’t a wrong mark. It’s beautiful.”