A Turn for the Better

It was three o’clock in the morning, and it was snowing heavily in Beijing. After he was done recording the program, Fang Juexia sat in his manager’s car to go back to his dormitory. He looked out of the window in a daze. The concrete forest covered in snow was incredibly quiet, so obedient that it was like a blanket had finally been laid over a stiff body waiting for peace. 

The recording had gone on for far too long. The indoor competitive games had sapped Fang Juexia of all his energy. He wasn’t good at socialising with others, yet he always has to submit because of the exposure it affords.

“Juexia, are you tired? How long did the recording go for this time, damn it…” Manager Cheng Qiang sneaked a glance at the rearview mirror; within the mirror, Fang Juexia was covered in an oversized, fluffy black down. His pale face was about to sink into the darkness, as if he was just a beautiful phantom who was sealed up in the mirror.

Fang Juexia had his head turned to one side, and the light red birthmark at the corner of his left eye could be seen through the strands of hair on his forehead. He caught a glimpse of the faded maple leaves buried by the snow outside the window. Late autumn had fled in a hurry, leaving them behind, forgotten, and now they were a mere touch of red amidst the blanket of ice and snow.

Or perhaps, he was mistaken.

“Eight hours and forty-two minutes,” he replied with exact numbers. His voice was very soft. Then, he answered the first question, “It’s okay, I’m not tired.”

“Get more sleep before the next recording. Don’t go to the practice room.” When Cheng Qiang turned the steering wheel, he changed the subject, “But you barely spoke towards the end, that won’t do. The TV station didn’t give you much screen time in the first place. If you don’t speak, they would just cut you out entirely. You’re someone who can attract a whole wave of fans with just your face, you know? As long as the camera focuses on you, you’ll win.”

Fang Juexia knew that Cheng Qiang had good intentions, so he forced out a smile and said in a gentle tone, “Okay, I’ll definitely take note next time.”

Upon hearing that, Cheng Qiang couldn’t say anything more. Fang Juexia is a member of the six-man boy band, Kaleido, and he could be considered a treasure that their company had picked up by chance. After all, he was once a trainee in Astar, the top entertainment agency in China. He had a fan support group even before his debut. Rumour has it that he would debut as the Center in the company’s new boy band. But an unforeseen event occurred; Fang Juexia actually left his original company before the band was formed and joined Star Chart. After two years of being a trainee, he debuted as the face of the group, main dancer, and lead vocal of the boy band Kaleido. He was the key figure of the group.

At the beginning of his debut, there was quite a stir as well. Fang Juexia’s popularity from being the best trainee in the beginning hadn’t waned, and there were also loyal fans who had always been waiting for him. When he first took charge of this band, Cheng Qiang was full of enthusiasm and expectations. After all, these children had both good looks and talent. But even he didn’t expect the series of events that occurred afterwards.

Coming to a premature end doesn’t feel good at all.

He suddenly recalled something. “Oh, right, you were supposed to take photos for the inside pages of a magazine tomorrow…” As soon as he thought about it, Cheng Qiang almost flared up, but he didn’t want to affect Fang Juexia’s mood so he informed him in a tone that could be considered relaxed, “You don’t have to go anymore, they have other arrangements on their side.

Fang Juexia actually knew about that in the afternoon. During his break, he heard his assistant, Xiao Wen, on the phone, while cursing about “intercepting”, and “so what if they’re one of the FBM (Five Big Magazines: Vogue, Bazaar, ELLE, Cosmo and Jiaren), do they think they’re all that just because they have a ton of readers”. He looked quite indignant then. Later on, after asking about it, he found out that the inside page shooting and interview that had been finalised earlier was intercepted by a male actor who had recently become popular due to a hit web drama. Losing a job opportunity should have been quite discouraging, yet Fang Juexia felt relieved instead.

“It’s okay, there’ll be more chances in the future. That magazine can be considered to owe us one now,” Cheng Qiang comforted. “It’s pretty good now. Since you don’t have work tomorrow morning, you can sleep in and eat something good. You’ve become skinnier recently. Oh right, when you go back, tell Ling Yi that if he orders takeaway in the middle of the night again I’m going to force him to go on a diet. He doesn’t have the self-awareness of being an idol at all, his cheeks are just full of fat when you pinch them. Is he trying to become a comedian…”

As he listened to his manager nag, Fang Juexia’s phone suddenly started vibrating. He took his phone out and glanced at it – the words “Assistant Director Yang” were flashing on the screen. Two seconds later, he pressed the side button to turn the display screen off, acting as if he didn’t see it.

But within a minute, his phone started vibrating again. It was a text message this time.

[Why didn’t you pick up?]

[Did you think over what we talked about last time?]

[Call me back, hurry!]

[Don’t worry, you can be certain I won’t treat you unfairly.]

The text messages flowed out one by one, like snakes constantly scuttling out of holes in the dark.

His fingers were frozen from the cold, so he typed slowly.

[I’ve already refused your offer the last time.]

Within two seconds, his phone rang again, so Fang Juexia had to pick it up. The middle-aged man on the other end started raging, “I’ll give you one more chance. You have nothing to lose from this! If you want to continue participating in the program, then you better start behaving.”

“I apologise.” Fang Juexia’s calmness seemed out of place at the moment. Seeing that something seemed off, Cheng Qiang glanced at him again. “Who is it?”

After half a month of offering carrots and sticks, Assistant Director Yang has lost all patience. All kinds of unpleasant words started spewing from his mouth, “Do you know how many people who can’t get famous would stick close to my ass? Do you think you’re some clean toy?”

Here we go again.

“Laozi is letting you follow me because I think highly of you, I think highly of your face. You think I’d cling onto you? Pei, you’re just a slut yet you dare set up a chastity gate, you don’t need to come to the recording anymore! Pack your bags and scram! Seriously, I fucking gave you face and you have the nerve to not take it!”

Fang Juexia listened to his scolding in silence. When the other side hung up in exasperation, he finally felt relieved.

“What is it? Who was that?”

“Assistant Director Yang.” Fang Juexia announced the outcome as if it was nothing major, “He asked me to get off the program.”

“What?!” Cheng Qiang stopped the car at once and turned around. “No wait, what, what happened?”

Fang Juexia licked his dry lips and simplified the whole process down to its barest essentials. “He has always wanted me to follow him, I didn’t agree, so he wants to kick me away.”

He had said those words very nonchalantly, yet Cheng Qiang’s expression changed and he didn’t know what to say for a while.”

“This isn’t funny, we had signed for six episodes in the beginning. You’ve only gone for three recordings! This is a breach of contract…”

Fang Juexia said in a flat tone, “It isn’t the first time for them to do something like this. There’s no point in discussing contracts with hoodlums.”

That was true. Cheng Qiang rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette. A cold gust of wind poured in all of a sudden, beating painfully against their faces. “By then, they may just throw the blame to you to make you look bad, no they’ll definitely do that, they’d have to come up with a reason for kicking you off the show all of a sudden…this won’t do, I have to contact the TV station. We can’t just let him mess around like that.”

Hearing this, Fang Juexia’s indifference thawed. He sometimes wished that he wasn’t a member of a band, so that he would be able to assume responsibility for everything without dragging anyone else down.

“I’ll have to trouble you all, Qiang Ge.” At last he sighed, breaking the calm front he possessed as if he was an outsider.

Cheng Qiang’s hands gripped the steering wheel as he muttered some vague curses. His brows furrowed, then smoothed out. With swift movements, he put out his unfinished smoke, rolled up the windows, and started the car again. “It’s okay, it isn’t the first time this damn program’s messing with us. Nothing happened the last time too.”

Last time…

A tall figure walked by on the road. Fang Juexia, who was in a daze, mistook that person for someone else. He raised his hand to wipe away the condensation on the windows. That person turned around as well, but it wasn’t the person he was thinking about, so he calmed down.

Of course nothing would happen, who would dare provoke a powerful little devil?

After a while passed, Cheng Qiang heard the word “sorry” uttered at the back. This made him feel even more helpless. Beyond the windshield, the night scene of the city continued flying backwards, and the circle of light cast by the street lamps broadened their field of view. Suddenly, the scene of Fang Juexia coming to the company for the first time popped up in front of his eyes. At that time, he was stopped by a female colleague for some gossip, saying that a super amazing trainee had just arrived at their company who looked insanely handsome.

He wanted to know how exaggerated the ‘insane’ part was, so he dropped whatever work he had and ran over to have a look.

He really was especially good-looking, extremely good-looking. He was so good-looking that his scout was put on the company’s annual commendation list by default.

At that time, Fang Juexia was only 18 years old, dressed in a black hooded sweater. He had even thought that the sweater, which had no sense of design, looked good because he was wearing it. The young man’s bare face felt transparent somehow, and the spot at the corner of his left eye close to his temple had a tiny, thin light red birthmark that looked very unique.

In this circle, the supply of pretty faces has always exceeded demand. They were refined and approachable, attracting you as they roused your imagination.

But what’s special about Fang Juexia’s beauty was how distant it seemed.

He naturally has a temperament that seems to keep people out of a ten-thousand-mile radius around him, like a silent, cold art piece with a low saturation.

Cheng Qiang sent him back to the dormitory. Although Fang Juexia was tired, he was feeling restless. He took a bath, then sat in front of his desk and quietly opened a Sudoku book. With a pen in hand, he calculated everything out silently before filling in the blanks with numbers one after another, and his heart gradually calmed down. Once he was done with the Sudoku game, Fang Juexie went to bed and covered himself with a blanket. A wave of sleepiness hit him like a tide, submerging him in an instant. He didn’t know how long he was deep asleep for before he vaguely heard a familiar voice while he was half-conscious.

“Juexia? Jue–xia–”

After struggling to open his eyes, he was greeted by the sight of a face mask that was within inches. Fang Juexia blinked twice, like a lens that was trying to focus, then burrowed deeper under his blanket. With a drowsy voice, he asked, “What time is it?”

Ling Yi took off his face mask. “It’s so late we can have afternoon tea!” As the main vocalist and treble, his voice would reverberate when he shouts. His ice cold hand reached into the blanket and he pulled Fang Juexia out. “Stop sleeping my Ge, something big happened!”

The words “something big” stabbed Fang Juexia in an instant. He sobered up, wiped his face, and got off the bed. “I’ll go wash up.”

“Why is this Ge so calm all the time…” Ling Yi sat up from the bed and ran back to the living room. Sitting side by side on the sofa in the living room were two big guys — one was Kaleido’s main dancer, Lu Yuan, and the other was He Ziyan, the lead rapper. The two of them had their heads stuck together as they stared at a laptop’s screen with relish.

“You’re awake?” Jiang Miao, the leader of the team, had just wiped down the zither placed in the corner of the living room with the soft piece of cloth in his hand. “I’ll go heat up the soup for him, he hasn’t eaten anything after sleeping for so long.”

Ling Yi nodded rapidly, his gaze chasing after Jiang Miao, who was walking to the kitchen. “Miao Ge, I want a bowl too!”

Lu Yuan exclaimed, “These girls are bloody amazin’! How could they say that?!”

He Ziyan, who was sitting right next to him, teased, “Dalian Hunk, please speak proper Mandarin.”

Lu Yuan, “I am speaking proper Mandarin!”

Ling Yi snickered as he squeezed in with them, emulating his accent, “Din’ he now, it was bloody proper!”

“Piss off!”

Just as they were causing a huge fuss, Fang Juexia walked out. The three-man group on the sofa looked up with subtle expressions on their faces.

Fang Juexia understood. Before the rest could speak, he apologised, “I’m sorry, I got you all involved again.”

The three people on the sofa looked at each other, then looked back at Fang Juexia, question marks plastered all over their faces.

“Huh, shouldn’t we be thanking you?” He Ziyan said with a smile, “I didn’t expect that our K band would blow up in such a way.”

Thank?

Fang Juexia had a vague sense that everything seemed to be a little different from what he had predicted. “What was the big thing you guys were talking about?”

Ling Yi turned the laptop around to face Fang Juexia. “The video taken of you and Xiao Pei at the airport by a fan made it to the Hot Searches list! Look, there are already more than 30,000 shares!”

And Pei Tingsong?

Fang Juexie squinted a little as he watched the video playing on the screen. It was taken when he and Pei Tingson were waiting at the airport the day before yesterday.

In the video, Pei Tingsong, dressed in a black overcoat, was wearing a pair of sunglasses as he strode over with his long legs to Fang Juexia, who was looking down at his ticket. He forced him to walk back so much that he had to lean on the wall. This guy who was almost 1.9m tall exuded an overbearing pressure. He casually took away the ticket in Fang Juexia’s hand, pinching it between his fingers as he smiled at Fang Juexie, seeming as if he was saying something. Then he lifted his hand, and just like that, gently patted Fang Juexia’s cheek with the ticket.

The straight, sharp line of the ticket glided across his fair skin, that piece of paper bumping around with no restraint as they tried to knock down each other’s bottom line.

It really was Pei Tingsong’s vile style, as always.

But no one expected this scene to be caught on camera.

In the video, Fang Juexia looked up slightly and stared at Pei Tingsong, only to see the smile on his face become more arrogant. He remembers the atmosphere then, and he also remembers how Pei Tingsong was actually forcing him to switch seats. At that time, he was adhering to his usual code of How to Get Along with Pei Tingsong 101 – hide whenever he can and not cause any trouble. So he took the ticket back, bit it, straightened his lapel with both hands, then looked up again and forced out a soulless smile as he faced the youngest member slash devil incarnate of their group. 

Ling Yi, who was lying on Fang Juexia’s shoulder, was scrutinising the Fang Juexia in the video in silence. He saw this living Buddha’s expression turn grave, who then stayed silent for a while before speaking.

“Are the netizens talking about how Pei Tingsong is bullying me in the group? Has the company’s PR said anything?”

Teammates: …

“Juexia, wake up!” Ling Yi shook him vigorously. “They’re shipping you and Pei Tingsong!”

“Ship…” Fang Juexia was instantly stunned.

How can there be people in this world who would ship the CP who has the worst relationship in the group?

Dalian Hunk Lu Yuan bravely snatched the mouse to click on the comments. “Ai, my goodness you just haven’t seen what the netizens are saying. Come come come, I’ll show you, it’s really just, wow.”

[Licking Sugar in the North Pole Circle (north pole circle = shipping rarepairs, basically): AAAAHHHHHH PHEROMONES ARE FLOODING THE SCREEN!!! (*whispers* see the beautiful Gege leaning against the wall wearing a white wool? Is the mark at the corner of his eye a wound or birthmark ah, this beautiful Gege is so handsome!)]

Just by seeing the first comment, Fang Juexia could feel what wow meant.

[First Class Member of the Roast Duck Association: how are they able to turn a ticket into something so sexual?]

[77repeat77: holy crap that little Ge in the black overcoat is so tall and cool! Who is he!?]

[Player12: *SHOCK* that black overcoat boy is too gong ba, using a ticket to pat his face, oh my god…]

[Is Kaleido back today: fjx really deserves to be called the one and only ice cool beauty amongst male idols today, he looks so cold and lusty with that ticket in his mouth, this is a 10/10 scenery.]

[Putuo Temple Believer: he’s our little unpopular band Kaleido’s 19-year-old main rapper, Pei Tingsong! The N rich gen who’s chasing his dreams, Putuo Temple (Putuo Temple = Pu Tuo Si = PTS = same acronym for Pei Tingsong’s name), hear his name! Xiao Pei Xiao Pei, invest in him and you won’t lose!]

[First-class scholar of the handsome men appreciation profession: Putuo Temple scenery hahahaha, isn’t the k band’s secret code too idiotic?!]

[I am Fang Juexia’s gorgeous birthmark: An idol by birth, Fang Juexia, hear his name! The FACE OF THE GROUP WHO’S THE MAIN DANCER AND MAIN VOCAL, an omnipotent ACE!]

[I will always love my K]: Is our K finally going to become popular (sobs) although the two aces really aren’t pushed as a pairing officially, they should be the coldest CP within the group…a combination that instantly BE-ed after debut]

[I hate Pythagorean theorem the most: what the fuck this pairing actually BE-ed right after debut?]

[I’m a little smartass: a passer-by fan here, there have been rumours of them not getting along with each other ever since their debut. Pts doesn’t even stay in the dormitory with the rest, though there are some who said that Pei Tingsong’s living outside because he’s still schooling. In any case, it’s true his family’s rich, I think he went to the US when he was really little and only came back recently. He probably just debuted for fun, so he’s not serious about it at all. But his skill can really crush most of the other idols, he’s crazy talented.]

[10/10 scenery: isn’t it because someone’s an airborne member that they don’t get along?] (airborne member = slang for someone who debuts without going through a training period or whose training period was extremely short)

[With money, you can do anything: he’s an airborne member with skill, don’t like it? Isn’t your idol someone who brags about knowing how to do everything? Go rap then, if you can’t stand it then hug a higher-up’s thigh to kick our young master out]

[Really good at getting blacklisted: where did this unknown group who’s buying their way into the hot search list coming from? I’m speechless.]

[I’m a fan of everyone: Is my North Pole Circle’s TingJue CP finally going to blow up? Call a spade a spade, once you get what this pair is about it’s really just wow. Devil incarnate delinquent handsome gong x cold, beautiful, ascetic shou, isn’t it so damn shippable?]

[Who said it isn’t so?: Is the one with a hat the face of K group? I may be a passerby, but I think this face is GORGEOUS! Especially his birthmark! What the fuck!!]

[Expert at spectating gossip: I sort of heard about how the face of K group had been taken advantage of by his original company, is that true?] (take advantage here is a specific term for uh, having sexual relations in return for benefits)