CH 58

Chapter 58 – Follow Up A Victory With A Hot Pursuit

Give me a chance.

Fang Juexia was stunned. His strong and stable logic system was defeated at this moment and lost all its operational power.

His eyes shifted from their clasped hands to Pei Tingsong’s face. Choosing a point—he couldn’t understand the meaning of this more clearly. There was no other person in the world who could comprehend the meaning of this phrase better than him, because this was originally what he had said to Pei Tingsong, describing his closed and negative view of love, and how he did not believe that people could really find true love.

But just now, Pei Tingsong had reconstructed his own words.

Too straightforward, even more straightforward than the three words, ‘I love you.’

Fang Juexia opened his mouth, but couldn’t speak. He seemed to have lost his ability of speech.

“I’m not asking you to give a response now,” Pei Tingsong said seriously, “and I know that whatever you say now would be a rejection towards me. In fact, you don’t have to care too much about it. You can take what I said today to be some kind of self introduction.”

“When I say ‘I like you’, it really is no different from when I say ‘My name is Pei Tingsong, and I’m 20 years old’. There’s no difference, it’s all self-expression.”

Too many things had happened today that Fang Juexia hadn’t expected. He hadn’t expected Pei Tingsong to come and find him, he hadn’t expected Pei Tingsong to be angry, and even more so, he hadn’t expected Pei Tingsong to use his own rational number theory that refuted true love, as a way to express his feelings. 

Similarly, he hadn’t expected that when the three words “I like you” fell onto his ears, his heart would jump and start beating really fast, as if it had gone crazy. Clearly, not that long ago, he had heard the same three words being uttered by another person, but at that time, he had still felt normal and even steady. 

Suddenly, Fang Juexia realized that he was still holding onto Pei Tingsong’s hand, and so he hurriedly let go. “But, you said you weren’t gay before.”

Pei Tingsong actually wasn’t abashed at all about what he had said before with such certainty. “People’s self-awareness also needs to undergo a process in order to develop, doesn’t it? When I was sure I wasn’t gay, I didn’t like you yet. Now I can firmly refute the me of that time, because I have strong arguments against him now.”

Fang Juexia didn’t know how to deal with this. As this person’s undisguised gaze and confession just fell onto his eyes and ears, it felt as if magma was flowing through his whole body. His throat was hot, his chest was hot, and so were his ears.

He had never met such a person in his 23 years of life. This person wasn’t afraid of anything, and he could even criticize his past self logically and fairly.

Fang Juexia looked up at him. “Then why tell me now?” But as soon as these words came out, he thought of how Pei Tingsong had told him to believe him before his confession, so he added, “I’m not questioning your attitude, and I also don’t think you’re doing this on a whim.”

His hand being released was within Pei Tingsong’s expectations, and being asked for the reason behind his words fit completely with Fang Juexia’s style of doing things. 

Pei Tingsong replied without any reservations, “Can you imagine? I’m someone who hates lying the most, but I was deceiving myself every day, telling myself that my mood and actions were just out of friendship. In fact, from the very beginning, this friendship was false. I not only deceived myself, but also deceived you. It’s unfair for you to have to accompany me in such an act, and I don’t want to continue to get close to you by using our so-called friendship.”

These words were like an alarm bell, striking against Fang Juexia’s heart. All those emotions of his that tended to appear so frequently these days, contrary to his logic, seemed to resonate with this statement.

“What’s more, in this next period of time to come, we will be facing very difficult matters and will be badly battered. I don’t want you to feel that you are carrying anything; you should know that I am your comrade-in-arms and the most special one. I’m the comrade-in-arms who likes you. I’ll accompany you in charging forward and shattering the enemy lines, and I’ll also protect you unconditionally.”

He spread everything out, without any disguise or decoration, for Fang Juexia to see. Knowing that Fang Juexia believed in logic, he explained the logic behind all his actions and didn’t let him overthink matters.

“Also,” Pei Tingsong continued to confess, “the reason why I just lost my temper was because I was jealous of Liang Ruo. I was afraid of losing you, and I was afraid that you would be moved by him. Although I know that you can’t be moved by just two or three sentences, but as long as there was even the smallest possibility, I was afraid.”

He laughed. “And I know that if I didn’t express my feelings for you, you wouldn’t be able to understand why I was angry right now. You could only reflect on yourself about whether you had done something wrong. The scene just now was very touch and go, and even if we reconciled, you would continue to blame yourself. I can’t endure you being like this, just like I couldn’t bear to hear your explanation just now.”

He couldn’t bear to hear his explanation. 

Fang Juexia’s nose stung a little. He didn’t know how long it had been since he had felt like this. 

Pei Tingsong looked at him with clear eyes. “Losing my temper was because of reasons of my own, and I had to tell you that.”

Every word of his was a straight ball, without any beautiful ambiguous words, and no word games or any other implications in them. Fang Juexia knew that this was something only Pei Tingsong could do.

It was just like in that ‘Escape For Your Life’ escape room episode, where when Pei Tingsong had first found the medical record and immediately confirmed his role as the knight, he had, in the next few minutes, quickly formulated a plan, taking each step after that with determination and boldness.

That was Pei Tingsong.

But Fang Juexia was confused. He didn’t know whether he should respond right now, or even what he should respond with. All these things had come on too quickly, and he seemed to have been thrust back into the role of cautious Black Knight now, where he was unable to see his heart clearly, while also being afraid of taking the wrong step. In just one day, he had received two confessions, and both even came from someone of the same sex—it was more dramatic than a TV series.

What puzzled him the most was why, when he had heard Liang Ruo’s confession, he had felt nothing but slight surprise, but in the face of Pei Tingsong’s confession, even thinking felt like it had become so very difficult.

Fang Juexia repaired his broken down thought process with great difficulty and tried to say, “I… I haven’t yet…”

Pei Tingsong interrupted him, “Don’t say it. At least, not now.” He lay on the steering wheel again, looking as if he had changed back to what a 20-year-old boy should look like. “What I just did, maybe you think it’s pretty bold, but I’m actually really afraid of being rejected by you. I know you must be confused right now, in fact, I am too. I’ve never been like this before, this is the first time.”

He turned his head and faced Fang Juexia. “Teacher Fang, don’t collect all the tests so fast, give me a chance.”

From under the brim of his hat, his eyes shone brightly. “Let me pursue you a bit, okay?”

This was the first time Pei Tingsong had called him that, and Fang Juexia’s ears turned bright red, with his person following that in a stammer, “P-pursue me?”

“Otherwise? Who made me like you?” Pei Tingsong was not shy at all, and the more he talked, the smoother he became. “You know what kind of a person I am. As long as I want something, it’ll inevitably be mine.”

“I-I’d better drive back by myself ba…” Fang Juexia tried to open the door and get out of the car, but Pei Tingsong grabbed his arm and threw his own words back at him, “You’re in an upset mood right now, so it’s not safe for you to drive.” He finished saying that, and even raised an eyebrow at Fang Juexia as he added, “How was that? I’m a good student ba.”

“You…” Fang Juexia was left tongue-tied, and even now, he once again came to the realization that he had no way to deal with Pei Tingsong. 

Taking the car key back from Fang Juexia, Pei Tingsong told him to fasten his seat belt, but Fang Juexia was still in a daze, frozen and not speaking. 

“Hey, do you want me to help you?” Pei Tingsong tilted his head and looked at him. 

Fang Juexia immediately reacted and pulled the safety belt buckle.

“Okay, returning home.”

Pei Tingsong didn’t speak any more along the way. Fang Juexia could feel that he was deliberately leaving him with room to organize his thoughts. His small internal clock had broken down, so this journey back to their dorm seemed to go by so fast that they had already arrived before he had time to think through everything.

The defense system he had worked on perfecting so hard for 23 years had been attacked just like that, and it was tethering on the point of collapse. Sure enough, Pei Tingsong was the biggest crisis of his life.

His hand went into his pocket and bumped into the USB drive, and Fang Juexia’s heart seized again. From the moment he had gotten hold of this evidence, his whole person had fallen into thoughts of self-blame. However, after being hit by Pei Tingsong’s unexpected confession, he had almost forgotten about this matter.

It was already half past one when they got back to the dormitory, and everything was really quiet inside; everyone should be resting in their own rooms. Fang Juexia supported himself on the cabinet by the entrance as he stood with his back to Pei Tingsong.

“You’re still worried about the matter with the leaked song,” Pei Tingsong directly declared.

Fang Juexia turned around and hung his head in front of him. “I’m a person who seldom thinks about what-ifs, and I don’t regret any of the things that happened in the past. But today…”

“You regret that you didn’t respond to Liang Ruo a bit earlier.”

Fang Juexia couldn’t deny these words from Pei Tingsong. He looked at a very vague stain on the tip of his canvas shoe and didn’t speak.

“Do you know? Liang Ruo wanted to help you, and even though I don’t like him very much, I admire the courage he had shown this time. He didn’t hang up my call and let me listen to the whole thing, which also shows that he had already resigned himself to the situation and didn’t want us to have a misunderstanding. Liang Ruo’s original intention in doing this and his execution of it were all good. However, Juexia, even if you had replied back to him three days ago and had gotten hold of this evidence, could we really have avoided this unexpected calamity?”

Pei Tingsong continued, “You are so smart that I don’t need to say these words. Even if we had gotten the evidence in advance, they already had the song. If they wanted to leak it, sooner or later, they would still do so. They could sacrifice the people who stole the music and throw them away, that person would just be like capital to be used. If Astar really wanted to compete maliciously, no matter how many days we knew about it in advance, we couldn’t have stopped it.”

Fang Juexia certainly knew that, but he was too used to carrying everything by himself. He was already used to tracing the root of his mistakes back to himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the despicable means of competition in the entertainment industry. Even if Astar didn’t do anything, Kaleido had become a thorn in the eyes of many people. They could avoid some bad things for today, but it would be very hard to avoid everyone who was targeting them. Becoming popular itself was the original sin.

Pei Tingsong threw the car key onto the cabinet by the entrance and said to him, “Don’t blame yourself for an unstoppable stab in the back, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Hearing this, Fang Juexia’s whole person relaxed, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his mind. He still hung his head, but his body swayed back and forth. As he kept swaying, his head lowered to lean against the front of Pei Tingsong’s shoulder, and he took in a deep breath.

Seeing him like this, Pei Tingsong couldn’t help raising his hand, pausing for a moment, then setting it down by his own side again. He coughed quietly and said in a low voice, “Hey, leaning against a man who has just confessed to you, aren’t you too unguarded?”

Fang Juexia immediately raised his head, leaned back against the entrance cabinet, and looked directly at him with that pair of beautiful eyes.

Unexpectedly, Pei Tingsong smiled back at him, specially switched to a British accent and told him in an affected tone, and in English, “Obviously though, I am a gentleman.”

Being teased by him like that caused Fang Juexia to accidentally let out a laugh. 

“Don’t be happy too soon.” Pei Tingsong said, “Because you have more important things to do now, and I am very clear on the current situation, so I have chosen to be a gentleman. But don’t forget what you said yourself, my bottom line lies in the third quadrant.”

Fang Juexia, who was smiling, choked at this declaration. He quickly changed his shoes and headed for his room like a refugee. He only let out a breath when he closed the door. 

Ling Yi was wearing a frog eye-mask and sleeping sprawled across his bed with a little Minion in his arms. Fang Juexia went over to cover him with the quilt before sitting on his own bed.

He tried his best to drive Pei Tingsong out of his mind, calmed down a bit, and then took out the recording to listen to it once. The voice really belonged to President Jin, and he did sound pretty drunk. 

Fang Juexia didn’t doubt the authenticity of the recording. The reason why he was willing to go to Liang Ruo without his cellphone was that he understood him clearly and knew that he didn’t have a bad nature. Liang Ruo didn’t even check whether he really had his cellphone with him and pretty much didn’t care if Pei Tingsong recorded the call before he revealed the entire story. He must have really wanted to make a break with the past. 

The recording mentioned the names of several people. Fang Juexia had a vague impression of them, but he wasn’t very familiar with them; they weren’t staff members he often came into contact with. He pondered over it, then called Chen Zhengyun. He was probably busy handling matters and only picked up the phone after a long time. Fang Juexia made a long story short and just said that he had gotten very reliable evidence, but he couldn’t say who had given it to him. He could only report the names of the people involved in the incident to him.

Back when Fang Juexia had left Astar and come to Star Chart, Chen Zhengyun had inquired about his whole situation in private and had talked with Fang Juexia about it. He knew the reason behind Fang Juexia falling out with his former company, and knew that there were many secrets involved in it. The entertainment industry was full of secrets, a fact which he understood clearly.

“Understood, I’ll send someone to privately check these people. In fact, I guessed it was AS. They can’t be held accountable for this kind of matter on the surface, and the company is also responsible for having been negligent.” Chen Zhengyun comforted him by saying, “Misfortune and fortune all depend on one another, so don’t be too nervous. Have a good rest and leave the rest to the company.”

Ending the call, Fang Juexia put down the USB, placed it in the corner of a drawer, then lay on his bed, looking at the texture on the ceiling.

For him, there was no difference between gay or straight love. Love was love, and was something that he didn’t trust and found to be a contradiction. 

But even with that being so clear to him, he still couldn’t make up his mind and decisively reject Pei Tingsong, while also warning him not to get close.

He was too confused. Fang Juexia closed his eyes and recited multiplication tables in his heart.

When he opened his eyes again, he found Ling Yi lying on his bed and snoring. Fang Juexia had been awakened by this little snore, and he rubbed his eyes vaguely before taking a look at the time. It was 3:30.

“Yiyi.” He pushed Ling Yi’s shoulder and sat up. “Why are you on my bed?”

Ling Yi suddenly woke up. “Juexia get up.”

“I’m already up.”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes.” Ling Yi got up from his bed and let out a giant yawn. “Just now, my alarm clock rang, and as soon as I opened my eyes, I came over to see you while half-asleep, because I wanted to wake you up. Yet, after calling out to you twice, I just fell asleep on your bed.” Saying that, he got off the bed and stretched. “I’ll go and see the rest of them.”

Fang Juexia folded his quilt before leaving his room. Seeing that everyone was already sitting at the table, he was surprised. “Miao Ge, you didn’t sleep? Why did you even cook food?”

Jiang Miao, who was dividing up chopsticks, looked up at him. “No ah, I didn’t make this. When I woke up, it was on the table. I don’t know who ordered this takeout.”

“Me.” Pei Tingsong came out of the bathroom. “It was just delivered, and it’s still hot. All of us have just slept but we didn’t eat any lunch ba, so let’s eat more and it’ll be easier to work in the evening.”

Ling Yi rushed up to give Pei Tingsong a bear hug. “Thank you President Pei for feeding us!”

Only after Fang Juexia went over did he discover that Pei Tingsong had ordered a lot of Cantonese dim sum, as well as scallop shrimp porridge and steamed sliced fish porridge.

“En! This chicken feet is delicious ah.”

Lu Yuan ate a mouthful of tripe stew and commented, “Strange, strange, what Xiao Pei actually ordered today was dim sum, not pizza.”

He Ziyan said with a smile, “Maybe he received a call for Chinese food in his dreams.”

Pei Tingsong retorted, “I just wanted to eat dim sum, is that not okay ah?”

“It’s good.” Jiang Miao gave each of them a bowl of porridge with a smile. When he handed one to Fang Juexia, he asked, “How is it, is what Xiao Pei ordered authentic?”

Fang Juexia nodded. “It’s quite delicious, I haven’t eaten these in a long time.”

“That’s true,” senior foodie Ling Yi turned the logo of the restaurant on the box around as he observed, “This place is pretty expensive. I’ve only dined in the restaurant before, I didn’t know you could order takeout from here.”

Everyone chatted idly with each other as they ate. It seemed that after waking up, they had all tacitly agreed to filter out the leaked song incident in the morning from their conversations. No one talked about it or even mentioned it, all of them wholeheartedly only thinking about their upcoming shoot that night.

After drinking a bowl of warm porridge, Fang Juexia felt much more comfortable from head to toe. No matter when he ate it, his hometown food had the wonderful effect of calming his mood. It seemed that what he had eaten wasn’t food, but rather a sense of familiarity.

To him, familiarity meant stability.

Xiao Wen was quite punctual in picking them up. On the way, he comforted them by saying that the company had dealt with the situation in a timely manner. The scope of the leaked song wasn’t as large as they had imagined, so they shouldn’t worry too much about it. As soon as the six people got out of the car, they went straight to the studio, and their first set of make-up took several hours to finish. Their costume was an improved black military uniform, with similar styles but different details for each member. It would match with the first set they had, with red being the main color in that one. 

The ensemble show cameraman had also come to shoot and record the whole filming process. When he caught Pei Tingsong, who had already finished getting his make-up and hair ready, he asked him if he liked his make-up look and hairstyle this time. Pei Tingsong grabbed the camera lens and waved in reply, “It’s very good.”

“Which part is your favorite?”

“Favorite…” Pei Tingsong walked to the big mirror, and the camera followed him. Unexpectedly, he suddenly sat next to Fang Juexia, who was getting his hair done. “My favorite is this part.” Then he pointed at Fang Juexia’s birthmark.

“What?” Fang Juexia had just finished asking when he  saw the camera through the mirror, and then he understood.

The makeup artist had gone out and used a fine lip liner along the lines of that birthmark to draw out a more complex red pattern, which made it look like the spiraling tail feathers of a phoenix. Paired with a military cap, there was an abstinent aesthetic beauty to Fang Juexia.

After finishing up the makeup and hair of the last member, they finally entered the filming location. Fortunately, the director they had invited was a good friend of Boss Chen Zhengyun, and was also a famous music video director in the industry. He had deigned to do a favor for an old friend and started work for this music video early, setting up an emergency shoot.  

This wasn’t the first time they had shot an MV, but it was the first time they’d filmed one with such a high intensity. From 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., after changing two studios, they finally moved to an outside location. Then, after filming from early morning to the afternoon, they only finished at sunset, which is when they went to the green screen shed to make up some shots. These six people worked non-stop for a full 25 hours, dancing that single dance they didn’t know how many times, and at the end, found that they almost couldn’t even lift their arms up.

“You’ve worked hard.” After finishing up the filming, they bowed to all the staff members one by one. They were so sleepy that they could hardly say anything else. The cameraman in the studio asked them how they felt, and all of them were confused. The group leader, Jiang Miao, strongly tried to keep his spirits up and said something, and then Lu Yuan made a joke, and it was only after that that the group’s spirits started to rise up, and then everyone chimed in. 

“What did Juexia think of how the shoot turned out?”

Fang Juexia smiled at the camera. “The outside location is very beautiful, and in previous MVs, we had very few shots taken on outside locations. The Chinese style setting in the interior studio was also very cool. I hope everyone will like this MV.”

“Tired?”

He nodded honestly and smiled again as he added, “But very happy.”

However, they didn’t have much time to sleep; their comeback launch date had been moved up, which meant that the company needed to release all kinds of promotional photos and videos immediately. The six of them took turns getting half an hour’s worth of sleep in the company car. When they got out of the car, they discovered that there were fans everywhere outside the company building. There were also some substitute photographers and media outlets mixed in with fans, and being afraid of exposing their hair color, each of them got out of the car with a coat over their head, wrapped up very tightly.

“Juexia Gege!!!”

“Xiao Pei! Pei Tingsong!”

“Ling Yi, look at Mama! Ling Yi, you’re the hottest!”

“He Ziyan, good luck!”

“Lu Yuan! Jiang Miao!”

“Good luck Kaleido! Dominoes will never accept defeat!”

Back at the company, they changed into a new style, shot three promotional videos for the app, and then waited for the portraits for the music album to be shot. 

The first photo studio for the portraits was a dark one. When everyone was getting their portrait taken here, a light would be cast specifically onto their right eye, and the surrounding background would be relatively dimmed. For normal people, this environment would be just a dim one, but for Fang Juexia, it was like someone had turned off all the lights. After the first portrait was done, and as soon as Ling Yi took over, Fang Juexia wanted to see how his picture had turned out. He wanted to head to the side of the monitor, but everything in his sight was very blurred. He slowed down and walked forward bit by bit. 

He could hear the photographer’s voice getting closer and closer to him, and used that to judge which direction to go in.

However, what he didn’t know was that while he was getting closer to his destination, he was also nearing a stair step. As he took a careful step forward, his foot actually stepped on empty air.

His body lost its balance instantly, and his center of gravity tilted forward. Fang Juexia’s heart was violently startled, but unconsciously, he found himself falling into an embrace. The familiar smell of sea salt and musk wrapped around him, both unexpected and safe.

“That was you taking the initiative.”

Fang Juexia’s guide dog had changed. Instead of coming to his side immediately and helping him to where he wanted to go, he stood in front of an established trap instead, calmly waiting for him to walk through a flat area, holding his spot at that unknown stair step in front of him as he moved closer and closer to it. 

Thus throwing himself into his arms.