At this point, no matter how slow the three men outside the room might have been, they all realized that something was very wrong between Jiang Shu and Shen Fu.
All three immediately changed expression.
What exactly had happened? When they flew here from Xiamen, hadn’t Shen Fu still been completely ignoring Jiang Shu? They had all thought Jiang Shu had done something inappropriate and caused Shen Fu to dislike him.
So how had things suddenly progressed at lightning speed? Shen Fu was now allowing Jiang Shu to freely enter and leave her room?!
Gu Zhidao recalled how difficult it had been just to give Shen Fu a gift under the production team’s instructions. Yet here was Jiang Shu casually pushing Shen Fu’s suitcase out of her room. The comparison left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
Frowning, he asked, “The production team hasn’t issued any new tasks. Why are you coming out of Shen Fu’s room?”
Running Lighthouse: [What business is it of yours to object to what a couple does?]
Gu Zhidao’s fans: [D*mn it, can Chu Wei’s fandom control your head fan already?]
Chu Wei’s fans: […]
They wanted to kick that person out too. The problem was that they couldn’t. At this point, all they could do was hope Chu Wei’s management company would wake up soon and forcibly disband that idiot’s fan group.
Jiang Shu looked like a tiger that had eaten and drunk its fill, basking in springtime satisfaction. He wasn’t angry at all. Instead, he curled his lips into a smile. “So you’re not here to help us move our luggage? Then move aside.”
He pushed the suitcases forward, nearly running over Gu Zhidao’s feet.
Left with no choice, Gu Zhidao took several steps back, bumping into the two people behind him. All three men’s faces turned dark.
The uglier their expressions became, the more pleased Jiang Shu felt. So what if Shen Fu had liked them before? Now Shen Fu had said that she liked him. He was the present tense. As long as he kept a closer eye on things from now on and didn’t give anyone a chance to steal his place, wouldn’t he be the only one whose name ended up in Shen Fu’s family registry?
Pushing the two suitcases, Jiang Shu looked at the three men with an unbearably smug expression and strutted toward the elevator.
The three men: “…”
Why was he walking sideways?!
The die-hard CP fans in the comments: [HAHAHA, before watching this show, I never imagined I’d end up shipping this couple. Seriously.]
Running Lighthouse: [Tell me about it. I came for Chu Wei, and now I’m sitting here wiping tears over someone else’s love story.]
Chu Wei’s fans all thought: D*mn it, and you still have the nerve to say that.
Someone in the comments mentioned that from the very first episode they had already sensed an undercurrent between Shen Fu and Jiang Shu: [Everything started with that cold laugh from the Crown Prince during the first guest meeting on the first day. That fateful laugh of mine, sob sob. I still think about it all the time. Back then I didn’t understand what it meant, and some people even criticized Shen Fu, saying he looked down on her. Looking back now, when the Crown Prince heard the words “first love,” he probably wanted to chop off Chu Wei’s butt right then and there!]
[Sob sob, my only regret now is that we still don’t know what exactly happened between them before.]
On the night Jiang Shu got drunk, he had only spoken vaguely about the past.
And thanks to that troublesome friend of his, the audience had only caught fragments of what he was saying.
[Can I quietly ask something? When the Crown Prince talked about being forcibly (censored), do you all think it was a forced kiss, or something more?]
[Holy cr*p, stop right there! Hahaha, don’t get the livestream banned!]
[If Shen Fu forcibly kissed the Crown Prince, wouldn’t he just be pretending to complain while secretly blushing and surrendering immediately? Why did they end up separating afterward instead? Why didn’t they get together back then?]
The user with the garbled ID 4525245 had been scolded that day and hadn’t spoken again afterward, but he had continued watching the livestream.
Seeing the discussion in the comments, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of regret.
He took out his phone and carefully reread the message he had sent his senior brother that day.
“Shen Fu secretly loved D and confessed to D, only to be cruelly rejected.”
Suddenly, he wondered whether his senior brother actually knew something.
Opening WeChat, he messaged him again: “Senior Brother, Senior Brother, have you been watching the livestream these past few days? The CP I ship really got together!”
In the laboratory, a man wearing gold-rimmed glasses felt his phone vibrate.
He removed his rubber gloves and glanced at it.
So they still ended up together.
As expected. People who belonged in the heavens would only end up with other people from the heavens.
As for ordinary mortals like them, years later, in her story, they might only be unnamed male classmates whom she couldn’t even remember.
He had shared a desk with Shen Fu for three years. A simple glance to the left from the corner of his eye was enough to see her.
When Shen Fu first transferred into their school, she hardly spoke and rarely interacted with anyone in class. Only occasionally, when she couldn’t keep up with the coursework, would she ask him a few questions.
Because of their seating arrangement, they cleaned the blackboard together during duty rotations and worked in the same group when planning class bulletin boards.
After school, he would be writing chalk characters on the blackboard at the back of the classroom. Whenever he turned around, Shen Fu would be sitting not far away, staring blankly at the sunset.
It was difficult not to develop certain feelings.
Especially since, at the time, Shen Fu was the prettiest girl in their class.
Later, however, he discovered that Shen Fu had already been living under the same roof as the school’s most famous student for two and a half years. They had hidden it so well that no one in the entire school knew.
He noticed that once, after turning in her exam paper early, Shen Fu absentmindedly sketched on a blank sheet of paper. The silhouette she drew looked remarkably similar to that Crown Prince.
He noticed that although Shen Fu outwardly seemed somewhat annoyed by him, whenever that person passed outside the classroom window, her pen would unconsciously pause.
Even worse, that favored son of heaven’s classroom building was clearly located elsewhere, yet he always took the longer route past their classroom.
During a sports meet one year, someone’s basketball accidentally struck Shen Fu’s knee and drew blood. That Crown Prince immediately turned around and got into a fight with the person responsible. To this day, Shen Fu probably still didn’t know about it.
The bet.
It looked like a joke. But nobody knew the darker thoughts hidden in his heart at the time.
For a family like the Jiangs, if they discovered that Jiang Shu had fallen for a girl living in their home, a girl whose parents were essentially both gone, they would never approve, would they?
If he gave Shen Fu a push forward, would she hit a wall sooner and retreat before getting too deep?
Although his own family was wealthy, he had never been part of the Jiang family’s social circle.
As a result, on Shen Fu’s birthday that year, he had no idea what happened.
He only knew that afterward Shen Fu left, Jiang Shu came and beat him badly enough to send him to the hospital.
He had won. Yet somehow, he had also lost.
Because the Jiang family’s Crown Prince had money and influence. He could easily find Shen Fu after she left. But he couldn’t. He had even been forced to move to another city.
No one had ever known any of this over the years.
It was a secret buried deep in his heart.
When his junior brother kept pressing him for answers, perhaps because he had suppressed it for too long, he couldn’t help himself.
He rewrote the story as though it had happened to someone else and sent it over.
Then added: “Of course, this is all just my guess. I don’t know that much about the social circle those two belong to. Do you think this X is pitiful?”
The garbled-ID user replied almost immediately: “Senior Brother, you made that up, didn’t you? You’re really good at making stories. Is your hobby scriptwriting? How can anyone be such a pathetic loser? Seriously.”
He: “…”
“But don’t you think there’s nothing wrong with liking someone? Since both X and Jiang Shu liked Shen Fu, why is Jiang Shu allowed to stop at nothing, but X isn’t? And besides, they were only seventeen or eighteen back then. Being a little impulsive isn’t such a terrible mistake, right?”
The garbled-ID user replied: “Senior Brother, do you think X lost in this story because he wasn’t as wealthy or powerful as Jiang Shu? He lost because he wasn’t sincere enough! Jiang Shu says he wants Shen Fu to like him, but everything he does shows that whether she loves him or not, he’ll still love and protect her. His underhanded methods are aimed at other people. But this X in your story keeps talking about how he fell for Shen Fu and secretly loved her. In reality, all he wants is for Shen Fu to like him. If Shen Fu didn’t like him, then his underhanded methods would be aimed at Shen Fu herself.”
“…”
The junior brother with the garbled ID was so angry his hands were shaking. He sent a whole string of messages: “This really is made up, right? It’s not real, right? Otherwise, forget the Jiang Shu in your story, even I, as a CP fan, would rush to this idiot’s city and drag him out for a beating!”
“It really is made up. Don’t get worked up. Little Gu, when did you become a CP fan?”
The garbled-ID junior brother replied: “I’ve been one for ages! Anyone who breaks up my CP, and I’ll tear down their whole house!”
“…”
Fortunately, this was all just something his senior brother had invented. And now that Shen Fu and Jiang Shu had ended up happily together, everything was fine. Otherwise, he would have regretted it for the rest of his life.
…
While the garbled-ID user was messaging his senior brother, the guests on the screen had already boarded the plane.
Once everyone had fastened their seatbelts, the production team began announcing the remaining itinerary.
“So far, our Limited-Time Heartbeat livestream has been running for twenty-seven days. There are only three days left before the finale.”
The comments section exploded.
[Holy cr*p, how did time pass so fast? The show is ending already? No! I could watch another hundred episodes, sob sob.]
[My biggest gain from this show is probably becoming a fan of Shen Fu. I want to tell my girl loudly: You’re amazing!]
[Going back and watching the transcript from the first day, when the guests took turns talking about their first loves, feels like a lifetime ago.]
Regardless of whose fan they were, everyone felt a little reluctant to see the show end.
After all, arguments were arguments, but the show had brought them a lot of unexpected happiness.
At the very least, throughout April, many of them had lost interest in food and sleep and only wanted to rush home and watch the livestream.
For a while, the number of hostile comments decreased. People began flooding the chat with topics like: #SpringNeverEnds
The topic climbed the trending charts again.
The guests on the plane, however, felt very differently from the audience.
Zuo Mei sat by the window, impatiently avoiding the cameras as she stared at the clouds outside.
When she heard there were only three days left, what she felt most was relief.
She should have listened to her manager from the start and given up competing with Shen Fu. Now look what happened. She had gone through so much effort and used so many connections to replace Male Guest Number Five with Gu Zhidao, only to hand Shen Fu another advantage.
Who could have guessed that Gu Zhidao would turn out to be such a simp and help Shen Fu gain even more screen time?!
Last night, in order to complete a hidden mission, she had invited Wen Zhenghan to dance.
By the end of that dance, she knew there was no going back.
Perhaps they had once shared feelings when they attended film school. But now, she was no longer the unattainable white moonlight in Wen Zhenghan’s heart.
Putting on her eye mask, Zuo Mei knew that her career should be her top priority. Even so, she still felt a trace of melancholy.
People’s hearts change.
How many Mr. Jiangs could there possibly be in this world?
She was still full of resentment toward Shen Fu. But now she was isolated and unsupported. Even Gu Qingshuang had fallen out with her. Even if she wanted to cause trouble for Shen Fu, there were only three days left. She wouldn’t be able to accomplish much.
Still… She had one knife she hadn’t used yet.
Perhaps after the variety show ended, she could hand that knife to someone else. If she couldn’t beat Shen Fu, then so be it. At least she could trip her up a little and stop everything from going so smoothly for her. That would count as revenge for all the frustration of being overshadowed by Shen Fu throughout the show.
Xu Tiaotiao’s thoughts had already flown to the next survival variety show.
She had heard that one of the guests would be a muscular handsome guy she liked.
Gu Qingshuang carefully turned around and glanced behind her. Jiang Shu and Shen Fu were sitting together again.
Judging by the atmosphere between them today, their relationship seemed to have advanced by another huge step compared to the previous stop.
What was going on? Did Shen Fu truly have nothing left for her Ge except hatred? Not even the slightest lingering affection?
Or was it that her Ge simply wasn’t as charming as Jiang Shu?
You’re really useless, Ge.
But then…
Gu Qingshuang looked at Gu Zhidao in the row behind and then back at Jiang Shu.
Uh… Actually… If she were Shen Fu, she wouldn’t choose her Ge either.
Gu Zhidao sat directly behind Shen Fu. Seeing that Shen Fu and Jiang Shu were even using matching eye masks now, his face turned green.
Then he noticed Gu Qingshuang’s scrutinizing gaze from the front.
Him: “…”
What was with that look of disdain? Back in the Gu family, Gu Qingshuang had admired him more than any of her other cousins.
The production team interrupted the undercurrents flowing among the guests. “Tonight we’ll arrive at our hotel in Kunming. Tomorrow we’ll head to Shangri-La, where there will be an endurance mountain-climbing competition in which the male guests carry the female guests on their backs. After completing the task, we’ll return to the hotel and begin Stage Seven: Free Confession.”
The comments exploded again. [Holy cr*p, holy cr*p, holy cr*p! Confession Day is finally here!]
The production team continued: “Before the Free Confession stage, we will return everyone’s phones. However, until the program officially ends, internet access will still be prohibited in order to prevent outside information from influencing anyone’s choice.”
“On the night of the confession, male and female guests will not be allowed to meet face-to-face. Everyone may choose to confess via phone call or text message.”
“After the confession stage, each guest may choose one recording made by an opposite-sex guest during the cohabitation segment a few days ago and listen to it.”
“Please note: you may only listen to one recording from an opposite-sex guest. Recordings from guests of the same sex may be listened to freely. Of course, this entire segment will also be livestreamed.”
The comments section instantly erupted again.
When the guests had recorded those messages a few days earlier, the audience had not been allowed to hear them.
At last! The contents of the recordings were finally going to be revealed!
[I wonder what Shen Fu and Jiang Shu each recorded, sob sob. This devoted believer is willing to be vegetarian for life if their recordings are about each other.]
[Hahaha, stop dreaming. Shen Fu’s recording is definitely about money and points.]
[Honestly, I’m more curious about who Zuo Mei recorded hers for. The love-hate story between her and Wen Zhenghan after joining the show is pretty ship-worthy too.]
The CP fans were still hoping for a dramatic “chasing his wife through the crematorium” redemption arc from the Best Actor.
However, the two of them weren’t even sitting together on the plane.
[I’m also curious what Chu Wei recorded. Sigh, my broken-mirror-reunion CP, sob sob.]
[Doesn’t anyone think that besides what’s in the recordings, it’s also exciting to see whose recording each guest chooses to listen to? That’s super ship-worthy too.]
While the comments exploded with excitement, each guest was occupied with their own thoughts.
Jiang Shu wanted to listen to Shen Fu’s recording. But just thinking about it, he knew it was probably about points, money, or something similar.
The chance of it being about him was probably very low.
Thinking of this, he couldn’t help taking off his sleep mask and casting a resentful glance at Shen Fu beside him.
Whenever Shen Fu asked him questions, he answered everything. Yet even now, he still didn’t know what she meant when she said he had also been her first love.
Back in their student days, where had there ever been any sign that she liked him?
She was constantly scratching him, glaring at him, scolding him, and only giving him one hundred yuan a week.
She had clearly just been humoring him, right?
Like someone hastily trying to make amends after being caught red-handed doing something wrong.
And she’d even drawn someone else’s silhouette.
Although Shen Fu was wearing an eye mask, she could still feel the gaze coming from beside her, a gaze full of jealousy, like a resentful husband who wanted to dig her heart out just to see what was inside.
The pressure was immense.
She pushed her eye mask up onto her forehead and glanced at Jiang Shu. “What now?”
“Since you asked, I’ll tell you.” Jiang Shu looked at her resentfully. “That sketchbook that fell out of your backpack that day, why were there more than ten drawings of the same person’s back while he was walking into the school building?”
Shen Fu deliberately pretended not to remember. “Which day?”
Jiang Shu exploded. “That day!”
“If you don’t tell me the exact date, how am I supposed to know which day you’re talking about?”
“December 23rd, 2015.”
Shen Fu: “…” No way. He actually remembered the date?
Seeing Shen Fu’s stunned expression, Jiang Shu raised an eyebrow smugly.
Shen Fu actually did remember. The two of them had ignored each other for three or four days because of that incident. Of course, later they had somehow reconciled for no apparent reason.
That was how they had always been as teenagers. One would get upset for no reason, and then eventually one of them would cave and offer an excuse to make peace. The other would pretend to be unwilling, while secretly rushing down the offered staircase as fast as possible.
At that time, classroom seating changed frequently. During that period, Shen Fu happened to sit by the window, and with a turn of her head she could see the area below the teaching building.
Occasionally, while she was taking exams, Jiang Shu’s class would be having PE downstairs. Groups of energetic boys would be playing basketball.
After finishing her exams early and feeling bored, Shen Fu would doodle in a blank notebook.
One day, on the way home, some pages somehow fell out of her backpack. Jiang Shu happened to pass by, picked them up, and immediately grabbed her backpack so she couldn’t leave.
Back then, Jiang Shu was already tall and lean. Even as a teenager he was imposing, carrying himself with an overbearing air. Shen Fu only thought he was looking for trouble again.
Besides, how could she explain why she’d drawn him more than ten times while absentmindedly doodling?
Jiang Shu was angry. But Shen Fu was even angrier. She had no idea why he was so furious, nor why he cared what she did during exams.
She snatched her notebook back and told him not to touch it.
The angrier she became, the angrier Jiang Shu became. Pointing at the notebook, he demanded: “Who is this guy?!”
Shen Fu suspected he was about to report her to the old master. She shook him off, hugged her backpack, and ran.
Looking back now, the signs of their feelings had been there all along.
But how could sixteen- or seventeen-year-old Shen Fu have understood them?
“I was drawing you, actually.” Shen Fu leaned closer and whispered the answer into Jiang Shu’s ear.
“Yeah, right.” Jiang Shu wore an expression that clearly said keep trying to fool me. “What does that thing you drew have to do with me? The person in your drawings had crooked features and was wearing a school uniform. I never wore school uniforms.”
Shen Fu’s face filled with black lines. He actually had the nerve to say that.
“How were the features crooked? I’m not a professional artist. I was just randomly doodling with a pencil on scratch paper to kill time. Of course it looked messy.”
Besides, it had been winter. Jiang Shu usually wore either a long coat or a black down jacket with a hood. When he played basketball and took off his coat, he was still wearing sweaters underneath. Shen Fu simply couldn’t draw clothes that complicated. But she couldn’t exactly draw a boy without clothes on, that would have been far too embarrassing. So she had simply copied a school uniform design from a textbook.
Jiang Shu was overthinking things. With her elementary-school-level drawing skills, she could draw an eagle and he’d probably mistake it for a chicken. How could he possibly take those sketches seriously?
“Wait.” Shen Fu suddenly realized something. “So you were jealous back then already? We were only in our second year of high school!”
Jiang Shu immediately realized he’d revealed too much. His handsome face slowly turned red.
“Well, you were already drawing me back then too, weren’t you…” he muttered, his voice growing quieter and quieter.
Jiang Shu ran his tongue over his back teeth, unable to hide the smug satisfaction on his face.
Then he realized Shen Fu was still looking at him. Feeling awkward, he reached over and pulled her eye mask back down over her eyes. Forcing her not to look at him.
Shen Fu’s eyes were covered. But beneath the eye mask, the corners of her lips couldn’t help curving upward.
The comments exploded: [AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!]
The four men sitting behind them, who had listened to the entire exchange: “……”
What? What were the two of them even talking about?
Why couldn’t they understand a single sentence?
