Not long after Yu Chu hung up with Fang Lin, he got a call from Xie Zhixing.
The timing was a little uncanny. Before answering, Yu Chu assumed Xie Zhixing wanted to talk about Xu Chen too.
But Xie Zhixing only asked if Yu Chu wanted to come over that evening. It seemed he had no idea what had happened the night before.
Yu Chu kept his face blank, but answered in a cheerful voice, “Sure.”
That evening, when Yu Chu saw Xie Zhixing, he hesitated instinctively. He was worried this might be Xie Zhiyuan again.
Xie Zhixing looked down at him. “What’s wrong?”
Thank goodness. This is the real Xie Zhixing. Yu Chu smiled from the heart, then went over and leaned against him.
“I’m really scared,” he whispered.
As soon as Xie Zhixing heard him, he knew something had happened. Yu Chu wouldn’t speak to him in that tone otherwise.
“What happened?” he asked.
Yu Chu gave him a rough account of everything, leaving out some details, like how he’d mistaken Xie Zhiyuan for Xie Zhixing again.
“Did he hurt you?” Xie Zhixing asked.
“No,” Yu Chu said. “I got away.”
Xie Zhixing held his wrist. “Xu Chen, that’s his name?”
Once Yu Chu confirmed it, Xie Zhixing took his hand and gently pressed its cool back against his cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
Xie Zhixing had told him not to worry, so of course Yu Chu believed him.
“He was arrested today,” Yu Chu added. “I don’t know what happened.”
“It won’t affect you.”
Yu Chu nodded to himself, satisfied.
Xie Zhixing asked if he wanted to hire a few more bodyguards. Yu Chu refused, saying it would be too conspicuous to have bodyguards with him every time he went out.
“Then tell me right away if anything happens again,” Xie Zhixing said.
Xie Zhixing knew exactly what to do. He transferred Yu Chu some money to comfort him.
Yu Chu hadn’t expected that little bonus. He leaned over and kissed him.
After leaving Xie Zhixing’s place, Yu Chu had two peaceful days.
During that time, someone claiming to be an insider broke the story that Xu Chen had been taken down for offending someone. They couldn’t say exactly what he’d done, though.
Over the past two days, netizens had dug up everything they could about Xu Chen, turning up a whole list of industry insiders connected to him. Yu Chu wasn’t among them, despite having dinner with Xu Chen shortly before the trouble started.
After two days off and Yuan Xiangdi’s birthday celebration, Yu Chu went back to work.
This time, it was a magazine shoot.
Solstice had always had excellent fashion opportunities, and the group had already completed two full sweeps of covers at the Big Four.
The magazine they were shooting for today, Z, had featured Yu Chu on its cover once before. That had been a solo cover; this time, it was a group cover. Both had been invitation covers.
The stylist working with them today wasn’t their regular one. She was a white woman named Martina.
Her English accent and the gestures she made while speaking didn’t seem American. She was probably Italian; the pinched-fingers gesture was unmistakable.
Yu Chu sat quietly with his face tilted up, letting Martina do his makeup.
Just then, Yuan Xiangdi’s voice came from beside him. “Why are you talking so much nonsense today?”
Qin Yun, who usually needed ages to think up a cold joke, had suddenly been struck by inspiration. “Because I had shrimp paste last night.” [T/N: In Chinese, “shrimp paste” (虾酱, xiājiàng) is a homophone for “talking nonsense” (瞎讲, xiājiǎng).]
Yuan Xiangdi fell silent.
Jian Yuyang and Yu Chu found it ridiculous enough to be funny.
Hughes, on the other hand, hadn’t understood a thing. “What’s so funny?”
Jian Yuyang folded his arms. “Explaining the joke would ruin it. I’m not doing that.”
In the end, Yu Chu kindly explained the punch line to Hughes.
Once he finally understood, Hughes said, “Not funny.”
After his styling was finished, Yu Chu gave himself a once-over in the mirror.
He was wearing a blush-pink shirt with a white tie and white shorts. At first glance, he had thought it was just an ordinary shirt.
Then he noticed the designer’s clever touch at the back: it was open-backed.
Each of them had a different set, and Yu Chu’s looked like the most expensive one.
Literally. As soon as he arrived, he saw banknotes scattered all over the floor. The price of most props was hard to tell just by looking, but money came with its denomination printed right on it.
The set was a small pink room built indoors, its pink-and-white floor carpeted with banknotes.
Yu Chu crouched and picked up one of the pink bills. It was a fifty-dollar note.
“Is it real?” he asked, surprised.
Most of the notes on the floor were pink fifties, with a smaller number of bills in other colors, ranging from one to a hundred dollars.
Hughes came over and studied the bill in Yu Chu’s hand. “It’s real.”
When the others heard him say that, they crowded around too, incredulous. “They’re all real?”
The photographer’s assistant quickly explained, “Some of them are. The ones underneath are props.”
“Won’t it be a huge hassle to clean all this up afterward?” Yu Chu asked.
The assistant gave a wry smile. “It’s not too bad. We’ve had worse.”
Yu Chu gently rubbed the bill between his thumb and forefinger, trying to estimate how much money it would take to cover a room this size.
Before he could come up with a number, the photographer called his name. In somewhat halting Chinese, he said Yu Chu could come over for the shoot.
The photographer was Evan, a blond man with blue eyes.
Reluctantly, Yu Chu put the fifty-dollar bill back where he’d found it.
He stepped into the makeshift room, feeling a little awkward. He tried not to step on the banknotes, but every corner was covered, and there was nowhere suitable to put his feet.
Evan gestured toward the floor. “Step on.”
Yu Chu’s shoes were brand-new, but he still took great care as he stepped down.
Treat money well, and it’ll treat you well. They say everything has a spirit, and money is part of everything too. But under the circumstances, I don’t have much choice. I can’t exactly float over it.
Evan stood beside the set and explained the poses in a mix of Chinese and English.
Yu Chu sat down, then lay back among the piles of dollar bills. Since his shirt was open-backed, his bare skin came into direct contact with the notes beneath him. It made him a little itchy, but not enough to be unbearable.
He was dressed in blush pink, lying on bills mostly made up of fifty-dollar notes, inside a little pink room. Everything around him was in shades of pink.
Once Yu Chu had settled down, the crew began carrying things into the room.
He turned his head and saw what they were placing beside him: disco balls, the kind you’d find in a dance hall. They were smaller than he’d imagined, perhaps thirty or forty centimeters across.
The crew brought in more than one. There were three in all, and they placed them around him.
Looking at the silver disco balls, Yu Chu felt as if they had him surrounded.
The camera hovered above him. He looked into the lens and leaned a little closer to the disco ball nearest his cheek.
The moment he saw the little room, he’d felt strangely familiar with it. Then, all at once, he remembered why.
It was just like the packaging for the dolls he’d seen as a child. Some doll boxes were designed to look like rooms inside. He felt like a dress-up doll in its box.
Evan pressed the shutter.
When shooting, Evan dreaded working with models who couldn’t take direction. He would ask them to adjust their poses, and they’d stand stiff as statues. Then, once their poses were right, their expressions would be all wrong.
As fans put it, they had no sense of style at all. They looked like human-shaped coat racks, with clothes simply hung on them.
Yu Chu’s performance pleased him immensely.
The whole image was decadent, yet beautiful. It was exactly what Evan had envisioned.
It was rare for Evan not to lose his temper during a shoot, but this time he didn’t blow up once. All he had to do was give Yu Chu a single instruction, and Yu Chu delivered exactly the image he wanted.
The man was made for the camera.
After one section of the shoot went smoothly, Evan personally helped Yu Chu up from the floor. He even complimented him—a rare occurrence—then told his assistant to tidy up the set so they could start the next setup right away.
When Yu Chu got up, he accidentally brought a banknote with him. It was caught between his bare back and his shirt.
Hughes noticed and reached over to pull it free, then casually tossed it back onto the floor.
Yu Chu had heard that Evan was famously short-tempered, and that every model he photographed got chewed out at least once.
He hadn’t expected Evan to be so friendly toward him. The photographer even patted his shoulder and gave him a thumbs-up.
The crew brought in new props: several old-fashioned televisions.
Those sets were rare these days. Yu Chu guessed they were just empty shells, since he could pick one up without any trouble. A complete television would have been much heavier.
The crew placed the televisions on the floor, stacking two on each side and leaving a gap in the middle.
That space was for Yu Chu.
He fit himself neatly into the gap, followed Evan’s gestures, then slowly knelt and leaned sideways over one of the televisions.
As he turned, his bare back was exposed to the camera.
The studio was completely quiet.
When Evan pressed the shutter, Yu Chu thought back to the teaser photos they’d taken before his debut. Back then, he’d stood in front of the camera with everyone’s eyes fixed on him.
Being an idol meant being watched. At first, Yu Chu had felt uneasy under other people’s gazes. Now, he was completely used to it.
By the time the shoot wrapped up, it was already dark.
Yu Chu drank bottled water from the studio and kept chatting with his fans.
[haru: [Image]]
[haru: Just finished work. Has everyone had dinner?]
[haru: I haven’t eaten yet. I’ll go with you all in a bit.]
[haru: （^ ^）～]
Yuan Xiangdi, back in his own clothes, wandered over with the weary air of someone finally off the clock. “This photographer was even stricter than I expected. My high school homeroom teacher wasn’t this strict! If my teacher had been like him, I’d have gotten into Capital University ages ago!”
Jian Yuyang folded his arms and said flatly, “Hilarious.”
“I remember Yenching University has a music department,” Yu Chu said. “Does Capital University have one?”
Qin Yun chewed his gum. “I think so. But the high schoolers are already on winter break, and we still aren’t.”
“Why compare our break to high schoolers’? Some of them only get a week off,” Yu Chu said with a laugh, then sent the message he’d typed: “I’ll come find you all when I have time.” Then he said to the others, “We should be off soon too. We still have a few fan-signing events we owe people. Once those are done, we’ll get a break.”
Because of scheduling conflicts, several fan-signing events that should have taken place a month ago had been postponed. The company had said, “We’re very sorry for the inconvenience,” then made things difficult all over again by rescheduling them for now.
Those events weren’t in Capital City, so they’d have to travel between several locations.
Yu Chu looked at the calendar on his phone and carefully counted the days.
Just a few more days, and I can go home.
