CH 82

Chapter 82 – Ordinary Two Points

Catching and drowning everyone inside

At the end of the segment, the marketing director asked again if they needed to cut off some of his more extreme words, but Fang Juexia shook his head.

“Since I have chosen to go ahead with this segment, I was ready to cause controversy.”

Fang Juexia didn’t want to hide any more. Acting as if those negative voices didn’t exist was an effective way to manage his emotions, but when they really appeared in front of him, he was willing to face them head-on as well. 

He had to admit that Pei Tingsong’s indomitable attitude had really influenced him. In the past, in order to preserve himself, he hadn’t spoken out at all, so that he wouldn’t drag any others down into the water for the sake of his future. However, preserving himself and defending himself were the same thing, and no matter how many times he was stabbed in the spine, he would continue refuting the rumors. Fake was fake, and even if no one believed it, even if the cost of refuting those rumors was high, he had to say it.

Not shirking away was also a kind of resistance.

That night, before going to sleep, he received a message from Pei Tingsong:

[A Constant Truth: I’m very honored to collect you, such a precious sample.]

Fang Juexia smiled. He always thought himself to be a more low profile person. He didn’t know what part of him could be praised as precious as Pei Tingsong said, so he replied—

[Moonlight: I’m just a part of the normal distribution, the most common and the most ordinary sample.]

Pei Tingsong did not agree.

This world was very crazy, with there being angry people everywhere who took pleasure in attacking others, and the puppets who followed their every step. Anger and violence churned into black water, becoming a torrent impossible to fight against, catching and drowning everyone inside. Someone like Fang Juexia, a mature and logical rebel, was as rare as a real heresy. He leaned on a crutch as he waded against the torrent with his every step firm but also trembling within its depths.

Pei Tingsong knew that Fang Juexia wouldn’t easily accept the evaluation he gave him. No matter how much he praised him, Fang Juexia, who was born in negativity, never believed in praise, believing only in his too-sober view of himself.

So, he changed his strategy and didn’t try to persuade him any further.

[A Constant Truth: Then I also want to be the most common sample, located right next to you. We are two juxtaposed points on the peak of the curve.]

They were very small points, but they could face the truth and hypocrisy of the world together.

[Moonlight: Okay ah.]

Stars were very busy, especially stars belonging to small companies. They needed to sacrifice their rest time in order to maintain their exposure, so this break they got was a very hard-earned one for them. Although they still had to continue the job by recording their fixed variety shows, it didn’t really count as being a tight schedule.

Fang Juexia and Pei Tingsong made plans to go to the practice room to write a song for the new mini album. As they passed by the snack shop downstairs, they bought a lot of stuff that everyone liked to eat and packaged it to-go. Fang Juexia let Pei Tingsong help him carry the bags to the practice room for He Ziyan and the rest. He also took a few of the bags, preparing to give them to Xiao Wen; lately, he had also been working really hard. 

When he got out of the elevator and came to the staff department on the fifth floor, he found that there weren’t many people working overtime at night. The light at Xiao Wen’s desk was still on, and seeing this made Fang Juexia relieved because he was afraid that he might not catch Xiao Wen for he had left for a meeting.

But only when he neared Xiao Wen’s desk did he realize that Xiao Wen was not there. Instead, it was a fresh-faced girl who didn’t look very old.

Fang Juexia had a good memory and soon recalled the new person Xiao Wen had complained about.

His eyes swept across the top of the desk, and his attention soon focused on a silver USB stuck into the computer.

“Are you the new assistant?” Fang Juexia’s voice was calm and composed, but the new person, who had just been called, actually panicked. She bounced up from Xiao Wen’s seat, making the papers land all over the floor. She immediately crouched down and tidied up in a hurry, apologizing constantly.

Fang Juexia placed the food they had bought on Xiao Wen’s desk and crouched down to help her neaten things up. “Why are you this nervous?” He looked at her intern nameplate, which had Wang Lu written on it.

“Yes…. I’m rather timid,” Wang Lu explained.

“You can’t be timid in this business, you have to get used to walking around at night.” Fang Juexia looked down to collect the documents and found that most of them were schedules of the Kaleido members, combined with Xiao Wen’s work notes.

Even after hearing Fang Juexia’s words, the girl could hardly speak up.

“Don’t be afraid.” Fang Juexia stood up, put the documents on Xiao Wen’s desk, and said, “Oh, by the way, just reminding you, Xiao Wen really doesn’t like other people sitting in his seat. I think the company also assigns interns their own desks, so it’d be better if you used yours in the future ba.”

Finally, he swept the table with another look, and noticed that the USB in the computer had disappeared.

These actions were really suspicious. For so many days, they had all been followed by stalker fans in turn, which meant that there had to be a source leaking of information. If this new assistant was really responsible for this, he must let Cheng Qiang know.

Fang Juexia walked to the practice room while pondering on this. At the door, he met Pei Tingsong, who was looking down at his cellphone. His expression didn’t seem very good, as if something had happened. He lightened his footsteps, but Pei Tingsong still noticed him.

“You gave it to Xiao Wen?” Pei Tingsong raised his head, and his expression of displeasure disappeared completely when he saw him. “As soon as I took the food in, they ate it all. I left you a bowl of preserved egg and lean meat porridge.”

Fang Juexia nodded. He wanted to tell Cheng Qiang about this matter first, but now he thought of something else.

“Have you been looking into the matter regarding the stalker fans recently?” He got straight to the point, not beating around the bush at all. 

Pei Tingsong laughed. “Why is it I can’t hide anything from you, how did you guess it?”

“I heard Xiao Wen say that you asked him to take pictures of some of the stalker fans.” More than that, he always felt that Pei Tingsong was not a person who would only fight back online. He wouldn’t suffer grievances or tolerate any sand in his eyes, so naturally, he would try to find a way to make the other party suffer.

Pei Tingsong didn’t deny it. “Yes, I’ve found someone to investigate them. They’ll just give them a little lesson, let them know that they can be held legally responsible for what they do.”

He continued, “These people, most of them come from rich families, and they’re bored to the point of weirdness that they start feeling like they can come into close contact with celebrities. I have to let them know that their behavior will affect their families. If I can’t control them, there’s still their parents, and even the police if that’s not enough.”

Fortunately, he didn’t really use violence to control violence. Fang Juexia had also somewhat guessed his way of fighting back, so he let out a breath before telling Pei Tingsong about what he had just seen at Xiao Wen’s workstation.

“When investigating this intern assistant, we should be able to ferret out a lot of things.”

Pei Tingsong was quite satisfied. Right then and there, he passed on the information about the intern assistant to the people he had arranged to investigate the matter, asking them to investigate her. They would only get more in fees, not less. 

“We’ll tell Qiang Ge about this assistant in a few days. These next few days, don’t make a move, I’ll wait for the net to be drawn in.”

As soon as they entered the practice room, they heard the other members gossiping while practicing dance steps.

“I heard that As’ stock has been falling recently.”

“No way ba, you didn’t buy shares in our rival company ba, Ling Yi?”

“How can I have that kind of spare money ah? I just heard from my friends that the top management of Astar has changed again, don’t know if it’s true or not.”

The group leader saw the last two people come in and clapped his hands. “Okay, let’s practice together ba. Isn’t there a song that still needs to be written later?”

“Okay—”

Who knew if Pei Tingsong’s warning was really effective, but over the next few days, the members ran into fewer stalker fans, and there were no more “regular visitors” downstairs. Both their supporting fans and more loosely affiliated fans called for a boycott of stalker fans online, and because of their voices, the fans were resolute and clear-cut.

Although it was difficult to put an end to such things, that didn’t mean that they should be ignored or that they must be treated like this. Even if it was just an online dispute, as long as the subject was discussed, it could wake some people up. They needed to find the source of these participants, and at the same time, let everyone know that this kind of abnormal behavior should be subjected to moral criticism.

There was nothing wrong with defending one’s own rights.

Under Cheng Qiang’s investigation, the new person was discovered to be a habitual stalker. This time, she had even organized a whole group, and had taken the role of being the leader for the group. She had hidden herself in Star Chart and had sold everyone’s personal information, which included not only Kaleido’s, but also their senior brothers and sisters.

Seeing the dismissal notice, a rock in Fang Juexia’s heart was also laid to rest.

Finally, he could let himself rest easy. 

One day, he discovered that the double petaled jasmine on the balcony had sprouted a bud. It was like a baby tooth, a small one, and it was hidden amongst the green branches and leaves very well.

It was not until this moment that he realized that summer had really arrived.

Summer was the season to be a little lazy. After all, Spring had started its nap and had now gone to sleep, and it wouldn’t wake up again until next year. 

Fang Juexia wasn’t a person who would go out when he didn’t have work to do. The other members were playing video games in the living room, while he stayed in his room to read the Roots of Romanticism that he had borrowed from Pei Tingsong before. Back then when he had borrowed it, he had never had enough time to read it entirely, so he had just read a bit. Now when he was reading it, he found himself in a different mood than before. Previously, he had just wanted to understand Pei Tingsong better, but now he wanted to learn more about himself from reading this book. 

Was he really a romantic? Fang Juexia always doubted that.

This book was full of discourses and expressions from the subjects of humanities and social sciences. It wasn’t especially friendly towards someone with Fang Juexia’s scientific background, but fortunately, the text was written well and was very interesting, so he read every word carefully, stopping to think about the content from time to time, with new views appearing in his mind. But as he kept reading, he saw a sentence underlined by Pei Tingsong.

[“When it comes to the word ‘freedom,’” Fichte said, “my heart immediately opens wide and blooms, and when it comes to the word ‘necessity’, my heart begins to spasm painfully.”]

The main point wasn’t him underlining this, but rather his annotation in English: Fichte, you are another me.

“Necessity” was also circled by him, and there was another line of illegible English written there. Fang Juexia could only read one or two sentences, and the letters FJX were written there. That probably meant, this is Fang Juexia, always saying ‘obviously’ and ‘may as well’, always taking necessity as the truth.

This should be an annotation made by Pei Tingsong while reading a long time ago. After all, the ink from the pen looked a little faded.

Fang Juexia found it interesting that Pei Tingsong would have cared about the way he talked so much even back then. It was a great honor for him to be recorded in these annotations by this young master, for his habitual “mathematical” way of speaking.

He found a pencil and wrote a sentence on the side.

[When FJX refers to freedom, his heart will also blossom. Because the acquisition of freedom is a necessity.]