Accident

The first sign of trouble was that the rest of the team couldn’t stand Yu Mao skipping practice all the time. She’d disappeared all morning, and by noon she still hadn’t come down for lunch.

Yuan Li couldn’t stop worrying, so she went back to the dorm to check on her, only to find her making herself a huge cup of milk; she’d already drunk half of it.

That was the first time Yuan Li had personally witnessed Yu Mao’s idea of “three meals a day,” and her eyelid twitched hard.

She really couldn’t convince her conscience to just leave her alone, so on impulse Yuan Li boasted that she could find someone to teach her expression management, and finally managed to talk her into going to the practice room.

After that, she went to ask Lin Baiyu to help as the teaching coach.

Lin Baiyu was easy to talk to and agreed at once, but she wouldn’t be arriving until later in the afternoon.

To keep Yu Mao obediently in the practice room while they waited, they discussed all kinds of ways to keep her there. In the end, none of them were needed.

Yu Mao had no intention of leaving at all. She found a spot, sat down on the floor, and went still as if she’d entered meditation, her eyes vacant.

Everyone was helpless at the sight, but they also felt it was much better than leaving her alone in the dorm. They hadn’t expected, though, that Yu Mao would run into trouble while staying there.

To tell the story properly, it had to start from the beginning.

After what had happened yesterday, Xu Yang had been much more subdued. She talked less and didn’t have a trace of spirit left.

The others didn’t know why, and at first they thought it was actually nice for her to keep quiet for a while.

But her condition went on for too long. In the afternoon, the moment she entered the practice room, she sorrowfully sat down in the corner and turned into a dejected mushroom, making everyone’s head hurt just looking at her.

As teammates, they had to ask what was wrong and check on her.

They couldn’t just let her stay gloomy forever; besides, it wouldn’t look good on camera. The audience might even think the whole team was isolating her.

But when the others asked, Xu Yang didn’t know how to answer.

She had only been badly shaken by how embarrassed she’d been yesterday, and she just couldn’t recover for the moment.

But she absolutely could not say that; otherwise, it wouldn’t just be Yuan Li who saw her make a fool of herself. Everyone else would know the stupid thing she’d done too.

It was awful. Just thinking about the cool, handsome image she’d worked so hard to maintain collapsing like this was more unbearable than killing her.

So after much thought, she found an excuse that also made her a little unhappy, though it wasn’t the main reason, and said carelessly,

“Yesterday I accidentally washed off my makeup. I spent a long time on it, so I’m just a little upset.”

Bai Manwen looked rather puzzled and eyed her suspiciously. “What’s the big deal? That’s how makeup works, isn’t it? You put it on, take it off, and put it on again. Just do it over.”

Was it really worth being this upset? She’d been wearing that face all day.

Xu Yang choked for a moment and said softly, “I didn’t bring my cosmetics.”

She really hadn’t... She’d completely forgotten and only remembered that she needed to remove the makeup already on her face, so she’d brought makeup remover.

“Then borrow some from us. What’s the big deal?”

He Yuan gave a light laugh, thinking she’d figured it out.

So that was it. She looked like she didn’t care about anything, but when something happened, she still cared about saving face.

When Xu Yang heard that, she suddenly thought of the several hours she’d spent torturing herself with makeup before coming here, and her eyebrows immediately drew together. She waved her hand, her whole body radiating resistance.

“Then... forget it. I don’t want to put it on anymore.”

Yirui An was also nearby; she didn’t dwell on the contradiction and casually picked up the conversation.

“If you don’t want to put it on, isn’t that perfect? It doesn’t make much difference whether you wear it or not anyway. I couldn’t even tell.”

Xu Yang froze, her eyes widening. Then she suddenly raised her voice.

“No difference!?”

Yirui An lifted a brow. “What’s wrong?”

Xu Yang took a deep breath and, with righteous indignation, held up three fingers.

“I spent more than three hours on that makeup, and you’re saying it makes no difference whether I wear it or not!?”

She’d been completely broken.

She hadn’t cared that much at first, but then she got hit with a sudden critical blow, and the misery only deepened.

Yirui An was silent for two seconds, then couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing.

Xu Yang exploded and grabbed the pillow from the chair to chase after her and hit her with it.

Yirui An obviously wasn’t going to stand there and let herself be hit, so the two of them started running all over the room.

The others had no intention of stopping them; in fact, they were a little relieved. They thought the mixed-blood girl really did have some skill, managing to turn the listless mushroom into an irritable hawk in one go.

Whatever else, at least she was energetic now.

—No one had expected that running around such a big room could still lead to an accident.

While Yirui An turned her head to taunt Xu Yang and dodged aside, she didn’t watch where she was going and accidentally crashed into the electronic keyboard.

Wei Zhiyu didn’t even have time to warn her before the keyboard and stand came crashing down with a loud bang.

Whether they were prepared for it or not, everyone still jumped.

But nobody had the presence of mind to care whether the keyboard was damaged. All their attention was drawn to Yu Mao’s enormous reaction.

Yu Mao practically sprang straight up. She quickly backed away, her steps nearly stumbling, and didn’t stop until she slammed hard into the wall with no cushion at all. Her whole body went rigid, her back pressed tightly against it.

For a moment, it looked exactly like a cat startled into leaping away.

Some people found the scene familiar.

Yesterday, when the show had just started recording, Yu Mao had also been startled by the flying drone, and her reaction had been almost the same.

But this time it was clearly worse.

Yu Mao’s body was visibly taut; transparent beads of sweat surfaced at her temples. Her breathing had stopped, and her black pupils were constricted, yet she was perfectly still.

She stood there in a posture of frozen fear, as if a terrifying monster were right in front of her and she had to remain motionless until the danger passed.

The others crowded around her and noticed that her chest wasn’t rising or falling, and only then realized she wasn’t even breathing.

“Holy crap!! Yu Mao, what’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you breathing!?”

“Are you okay? Say something, give us some reaction, don’t scare us like this.”

“How did it get this bad? Surely nothing’s actually wrong, right..."

So many faces hovered before her eyes; countless voices, worried or anxious, poured into her ears, yet none of them drew any response. She was quiet as though isolated in another time and space.

Yirui An tried reaching out to touch her, pinched her face, shook her shoulders; it still didn’t work.

A wave of panic spread through the group.

The viewers watching the livestream were in a frenzy too. Some were worried; others, projecting themselves onto the other contestants, started complaining.

[What are you standing there for? Hurry up and take her to the hospital!]

[It probably doesn’t need a hospital yet. This is a stiffening reaction from being too frightened, right? If it’s not serious, she should be fine after a while]

[Yu Mao knows she has mental problems and still won’t stay home properly; why did she come out to join a show? Isn’t that just causing trouble for everyone?]

[Exactly. Running into a teammate like this is bad luck. It was just a keyboard that got knocked over; not a huge deal. If a person gets dragged into it, then there’s going to be real trouble]

[Some people should really watch their karma. How can you say that? Yu Mao isn’t a criminal, she hasn’t done anything evil, and she’s not a person without civil capacity who can’t take care of herself. Why can’t she join the show? You’re already thinking about how she’d be a burden before she’s even dead. Do you people have any humanity at all?]

When emotions ran high, things were bound to get messy; the barrage of comments flew everywhere and the argument got fierce.

Just as Wei Zhiyu was about to call for the production team to send an ambulance, Yu Mao finally moved.

She slowly crouched down. Her eyes were still blankly open, but as if she couldn’t see anything at all, her gaze remained stiff and fixed.

Her hand fumbled around in her pocket, missing several times before finally going in and pulling out a tiny Bluetooth earbud, which she inserted into the ear hidden beneath her hair.

Then she covered her ears with both hands, closed her eyes, and curled up into a ball.

Even though her movement was still far from normal, it at least reassured everyone somewhat.

At least they didn’t have to worry about her suffocating herself to death.

“That scared the hell out of me,” someone muttered. “I wasn’t scared by the keyboard, but she nearly scared me to death.”

Wei Zhiyu crouched down and looked at her with concern and worry for a while, then suddenly noticed that her lips were moving very slightly, as if murmuring something, though no sound came out.

Yuan Li stood with her arms folded and sighed worriedly. “If a single loud noise can scare her like this, can she even live normally day to day?”

As one of the partly responsible culprits behind the situation, Xu Yang was covered in cold sweat.

All the embarrassment, annoyance, and unhappiness had been scared away without a trace; only the relief of having survived remained.

Thank goodness nothing had happened. She was still young; she really couldn’t afford to carry a human life on her back. If she ended up unable to sleep at night over something like this, how unfair would that be!

As the true culprit, Yirui An’s mentality was actually much better than Xu Yang’s. Once she realized Yu Mao was fine, she had already relaxed.

Now she crouched down, staring intently at Yu Mao, working hard to suppress the excitement in her heart; the urge to dig into her still burned so strongly in her eyes it was almost frightening.

She had one hundred percent interest in every abnormal, strange thing about Yu Mao. Right now, she only wanted to know what kind of past was hidden behind this reaction.

Too interesting. Compared with the characters she liked in games, with the dry text she had unlocked only after grinding and paying money, exploring a real living person was enough to make her adrenaline surge.

But only Yu Mao could give her that feeling. Yu Mao was the most special one.

As for Yu Mao herself, of course she had no idea.

Even though she was badly frightened, she remained remarkably quiet; her movements were restrained to the point that she seemed like fear hidden inside a black cabinet.

No one could know what she had faced in those brief moments.

Darkness; blankness; silence... a void from which all sensation had been stripped away.

She was a child abandoned by the world.

Only Changgeng could give her new life.

With both palms pressing the earbud firmly in place, the low, mellow singing carried a mysterious power, circling again and again through her brain, gradually washing away the frozen darkness bit by bit.

Yu Mao slowly began to calm down.

All agitation and fear were gently smoothed away from the inside out. Only one voice remained; only one figure.

The noise of the outside world also seeped through the gaps into her ears. She opened her eyes.

A face covered in tiny freckles was blocking her view. When it saw her eyes open, delight burst into its light brown pupils.

“Oh, you’re okay?”

Yu Mao leaned back silently, putting some distance between them. She lowered her hands and, as usual, took out only one side of the earbud, carefully putting it into her pocket.

“Don’t mind me. If you see me like this again, just treat it as normal.” Perhaps because she had only just come to herself, her voice was still a little faint.

Yuan Li frowned slightly. “From the way you say that, does this kind of thing happen to you a lot?”

“Mm.” She nodded, her expression unchanged.

That sounded more reassuring than a sudden accident. But seeing her indifferent attitude, the others couldn’t help feeling a little sad.