Ren Li looked at the beer Ye Zhinian had shoved away, then at the only bottle of yogurt on the table, and something stirred faintly in his chest.
As he set the last can in front of Zheng Yunqi, he gave this famous CCTV presenter a long, meaningful look. They traded a glance of perfect mutual understanding, and then he sat down without so much as a flicker.
As for the other guests—some were rueing their thwarted plans, others were busy enjoying the spectacle. Even knowing Ye Zhinian was allergic to alcohol, none of them found anything the least bit odd. Just a coincidence, clearly.
Surely it couldn’t be that Top Star Lu Chen knew Ye Zhinian, knew about his alcohol allergy, and had made a point of looking out for him?
You wouldn’t even dare dream that.
To outsiders, they were all people of the entertainment industry, forever crossing paths—even with gaps in status, surely they were closer to each other than to ordinary people. In reality, the wall built by different tiers was farther than the gulf between fan and idol.
Fans got offline events; even extras got to see stars day and night. But if you ran in different circles, you were truly two parallel lines—your social orbits would never touch.
Take Liu Chen, firmly planted in the first tier. Even he had only glimpsed Lu Chen from across an award ceremony hall at the start of last year—never so much as exchanged a greeting. If Lu Chen hadn’t suddenly shown up on a variety show, who knows when the two faves of the Bow to Chen and Chen CP fans would ever have met.
So while the Bullet Comments tore each other apart over this very point, the guests had already gathered their composure and settled happily into a circle, kicking off dinner-and-welcome-banquet right on schedule.
“First of all, let’s all raise our glasses and welcome Lu Chen into 《Utopia》!” As the show’s Main MC, Ren Li hoisted his beer can high and spoke on everyone’s behalf. “And let’s also thank him for his hard work on the road, helping us dodge the Chief Director’s sinister schemes and coast through a delightful afternoon!”
“Thanks, Brother Chen!”
“Thanks, Lu Chen!”
All the guests raised their drinks together—among them one conspicuous white bottle—and the atmosphere turned warm and lively.
Lu Chen held his beer can between three fingers and raised it along with the rest, but his gaze stayed glued to Ye Zhinian the whole time. Only after watching him sip the yogurt and unconsciously lick his lips did he smoothly shift his eyes away, lowering his lashes to take a sip of beer.
God, the agony… Every spring and autumn, Niannian got so swamped he had no time for set visits. By the most generous count, the two of them hadn’t seen each other in over a month.
When the person wasn’t there, it was fine—he could endure anything. But once that person was standing right in front of him, close enough to see and not touch? That was pure torment.
Why did he suddenly feel a little regretful? From the moment they’d met, forget kissing and hugging—he had to worry about getting glared at just for looking too long… And the most terrifying part was that tonight they’d be sleeping in the same bed, and he couldn’t do a single thing about it.
…The heavens truly were unjust.
Lu Chen raised his beer and downed half the can in one go.
Meanwhile, Ren Li was dutifully performing his Main MC role, tossing out conversation topics between bites to keep the scene from going stiff and dead and leaving the livestream with nothing to watch.
“Come to think of it, this table of ours covers the old, middle, and young generations of the industry, doesn’t it?”
The words had barely left his mouth when he felt a gaze drift over from beside him and immediately backtracked: “Middle-aged and young! Middle-aged and young. Calling anyone ‘old’ is premature.” Feeling the gaze shift away, he theatrically patted his forehead, turned his head, and mouthed a silent oh, crap.
Lin Siying, Liu Chen, and Ye Zhinian, seated on his left, all ducked their heads to smother their laughter, drawing curious looks from the three on the right.
“What’s wrong?” Li Nanshuang asked.
Ren Li shook his head quickly. “Nothing, just feeling a little sentimental. By the way—have you all seen 《Utopia》’s introductory teaser?”
Seeing everyone nod, he said with feeling, “The things those artists said in the teaser really struck a chord. In this industry, making one true friend is so hard.”
《Utopia》’s teaser was unlike other variety shows’. It wasn’t interviews with the participating guests, or footage of invitations being delivered—it was stitched together from a series of separate interviews.
The artists interviewed ranged from first-tier to third-tier; some appeared on camera directly, while others were pixelated with distorted voices. They were each asked three questions: Now or in the past, have you had a true confidant in this industry? What is your relationship with that person like now? Do you think making friends within the industry is easy?
The answers to the first questions varied—but the answer to the last one was eerily identical. Every single person said the same thing:
“Very hard.”
“It’s mainly that too many things get mixed in—status, resources, the division of benefits—all of it seeps into relationships. Even setting aside every external factor, a person who lives under this kind of high pressure long-term will change in thought and character, and that changes how they treat people. If the other side can’t adapt, going separate ways is only a matter of time. With that many tests, inside and out—even love struggles to survive. Friendship even more so.”
Zheng Yunqi’s voice was unnervingly calm, as if she were breaking down a math problem, laying out the essence of the issue in a few crisp sentences.
Everyone at the table wore expressions of agreement—everyone except Lu Chen and Ye Zhinian.
Ren Li had been listening to Zheng Yunqi with his head tilted attentively. Catching Lu Chen’s expression from the corner of his eye, his brow shot up. “Lu Chen, that look on your face—do you think there’s something wrong with what Teacher Zheng said?”
Lu Chen started, then hurried to respond. “No—no, that’s not it. I just… I just think… if a person is changed by their environment, it means they were always that kind of person. People adapt to their environment, yield to it to survive—but principles and bottom lines shouldn’t change. If they do, then everything that person showed before was nothing but acting.”
The moment the words landed, they stirred up a thousand waves. The guests’ expressions scattered in every direction—except Ye Zhinian, who lowered his head with a quiet laugh, his eyes brimming with pride and affection that couldn’t be hidden if he tried.
This was Lu Chen—his closest, most trusted friend and lover, who had walked beside him for over twenty years without ever changing.
Watching the droplets clinging to the yogurt bottle, Ye Zhinian’s thoughts flashed back to middle school.
The summer after elementary school graduation, Lu Chen’s family moved away. Lu Chen, who had been set to attend the same middle school as Ye Zhinian, was instead packed off by his parents to an elite private school. For their entire middle school years, the two could only meet on weekends and holidays.
It was also during this period that Ye Zhinian received his first formal confession.
That wasn’t to say nobody had liked Ye Zhinian in elementary school. Quite the opposite—since kindergarten, he had been the most eye-catching kid in any crowd.
Good looks inherited from his parents, a gentle and well-bred temperament, plus the artistic air steeped into him by his mother—Ye Zhinian had always been popular.
In kindergarten, he was the little “husband” and “wife” the other children fought over; in elementary school, he was the deskmate everyone wanted; and once young hearts first learned to flutter, the love letters in his desk drawer never stopped coming.
But the crushes of that age were too hazy—they arrived fast and evaporated fast. Even a face-to-face rejection, after some dramatic venting, simply passed. The worst outcome was a declared friendship embargo and total silence.
But the confession he experienced in middle school left a deep mark on Ye Zhinian—at one point, it even made him doubt himself.
With Lu Chen absent, Ye Zhinian, dropped into the unfamiliar world of middle school, naturally drew closer to his elementary schoolmates. His closest bond formed with Song Rui, who happened to be in his class.
Song Rui had been unremarkable back in elementary school—dark-skinned, skinny, introverted—but his seat happened to be right in front of Ye Zhinian and Lu Chen’s, so he’d slid naturally into their little group. Together with his own deskmate, the four of them were always together.
After entering middle school, spurred on by growth hormones, Song Rui shot up—ten centimeters in a single year, his features finally filling out. His skin was still a bit dark, but that happened to fit the tan athlete-boy aesthetic of the moment, and he drew plenty of admirers.
His confidence swelled accordingly. During the summer before eighth grade, he confessed to Ye Zhinian.
Ye Zhinian could no longer remember the exact words of that confession. He only remembered the look in Song Rui’s eyes after being turned down—
Shock, then disbelief, and finally, resentment.
When the semester began, Song Rui unilaterally cut Ye Zhinian off.
At first, Ye Zhinian didn’t take it to heart. No rule said a person wounded in love could only grieve and never be angry. Since Song Rui no longer liked him, he would simply keep his distance. Still, deep down, he couldn’t help feeling it was a waste—they had been such good friends, and now they were strangers.
But gradually, Song Rui began leading a quiet campaign to isolate Ye Zhinian, attacking his looks and personality with words, mocking his every move. Ye Zhinian was angry, but he never struck back. His upbringing made him disdain petty verbal warfare; he simply kept his head down and did his own thing.
Then one day, when Song Rui realized none of these tricks could touch Ye Zhinian, he turned his fire on Ye Zhinian’s friends—and that crossed the bottom line.
And so the gentle, considerate, refined, well-bred boy blew up in front of everyone for the first time in his life.
He flipped Song Rui’s desk in one violent motion, kicked the boy sprawling to the floor, and then, beneath a ring of horrified stares, dragged Song Rui in front of his friends, his eyes as cold as if he were looking at a corpse.
“Apologize. Or I’ll beat you so badly your own mother won’t recognize you.”
Song Rui was terrified out of his wits and stammered through an apology. The homeroom teacher arrived on the heels of the commotion, and both boys’ parents were summoned.
Afterward, the bullying came to light. Most of the class took Ye Zhinian’s side, and Song Rui was forced to transfer schools.
Perhaps it was the sting of a failed confession piled on top of the betrayal of having his bullying exposed by classmates—whatever it was, Song Rui exploded while packing up his things.
“It’s all your fault! You were the one who talked to me first! YOU gave me hope! With Lu Chen gone, you treated me like his stand-in, let me fill the space he left! But did it ever occur to you that I’m not Lu Chen? That I’m not your Childhood Sweetheart? I couldn’t stand how close the two of you were! What did I do wrong by falling for you?!”
Ye Zhinian had never imagined Song Rui’s inner journey looked like that. And what struck him hardest was that Song Rui was telling the truth—he had, at first, treated Song Rui as an emotional anchor for Lu Chen’s absence.
Best friends who had been inseparable since diaper days suddenly becoming someone he could see once a week—Ye Zhinian found it brutally hard to adjust. His urge to share had nowhere to pour; his thoughts had nowhere to go. Even walking down the street, he couldn’t find that one shoulder that bore exactly the right weight for his arm.
He missed Lu Chen so much, and he desperately needed an outlet for all that longing. Song Rui, a fellow elementary schoolmate, was unquestionably the best candidate on offer.
That realization dragged Ye Zhinian down into the mire of self-doubt. He began to reexamine everything—had he truly, without meaning to, given Song Rui some kind of hint? Had he caused the shift in Song Rui’s heart?
Hearing Ye Zhinian pour all this out, Lu Chen nearly shouted his response: “How can you possibly think that? He changed—that PROVES he was that kind of person all along! He just never had the chance or the conditions to show it before. And most importantly—you haven’t changed. You have always been that gentle, kind person who loves sharing everyday life with the people he cares about.”
With that, Lu Chen seized Ye Zhinian’s face in both hands and squished his mouth into a little piggy snout. “Listen to me. You did nothing wrong. The ones at fault are the people who can’t withstand the test. Whatever they become is their own choice—it has nothing to do with you.”
“…How would oo know I haven’t changed?” Ye Zhinian asked with great difficulty, lips still puckered.
Seeing him still agonizing over it, Lu Chen rubbed his face furiously in exasperation. “I just KNOW!”
That day, at parting, Lu Chen pulled Ye Zhinian into a fierce hug and whispered in his ear: “Don’t worry. I won’t change. I’ll stay by your side, always.”
…Looking back now, that was probably the exact moment his heart first turned toward Lu Chen.
Lost in the memory, Ye Zhinian couldn’t help the smile that curved his pressed lips—and that one smile set off another landslide in the Bullet Comments.
【Fuck! That look on Ye Zhinian’s face—pure, uncut ship fuel!】
