“What variety show are you going on? What kind of show is it?”
Luan Yi placed his phone on the bedsheet. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back to the bed, he was packing his suitcase. At the question, he replied, “That new dating show.”
He paused, then decided to fill in the key detail himself. “A same-sex dating show. It’s called Love Time Difference.”
Sure enough, the person on the other end of the phone immediately got excited. “The new dating show that Octopus Platform just announced? Holy shit, that’s amazing! Has your company had a change of heart or something? They’re giving you a gig like that?”
Although Luan Yi had only graduated from university a year ago, he had already been in the entertainment industry for four years. He had played supporting male roles in several low-budget web dramas and appeared as a minor character with barely five minutes of screen time in a well-received serious drama. He had a small following of his own, but aside from that, he had made virtually no splash in the industry. He could walk around outside without bothering to disguise himself. At most, someone might mistake him for a handsome ordinary guy and ask for his WeChat.
Naturally, he was a nobody at his company, too, with a presence so low that he was practically invisible.
However, the dating show Luan Yi had mentioned, publicly announced under the title Love Time Difference, had already become one of the most hotly anticipated programs of the year, attracting nationwide attention even before its premiere.
There was only one reason for this: it was the first same-sex dating show to receive official approval from the authorities above. The production team had also announced that they would select outstanding male guests from various industries to participate. In other words, they were going to put a bunch of handsome men on television and let everyone watch them fall in love, hoping to make the audience ship them so hard they'd lose their minds.
Before this, Octopus Platform, which had one of the most active young user bases, had already produced several successful seasons of established dating shows with different themes. Most had enjoyed excellent viewership figures, so the platform could be considered highly experienced in this area. As long as they maintained their usual standards, combining that with the inherently buzzworthy premise of a same-sex dating show, Love Time Difference was practically guaranteed to become a massive hit.
Although Luan Yi had heard about the show long ago, he had never once imagined that he might receive an invitation to participate.
In fact, the production team hadn't directly approached him at all.
His company had secured the opportunity, which was originally intended for its top star, Jiang Zhirui, a rising idol who had previously starred in a danmei adaptation drama. Luan Yi and Jiang Zhirui shared the same manager. The arrangement had already been finalized, but unexpectedly, just two days before filming was due to begin, Jiang Zhirui suddenly announced that he wanted to withdraw.
Rumor had it that Jiang Zhirui was worried about the risks involved. For one thing, he feared that the authorities might tighten restrictions again in the future. For another, he was concerned that his public image would become too firmly fixed, limiting the kinds of roles he could take on later. He felt it would be better to keep the question of his sexual orientation ambiguous for the time being. After all, he had made his name in a danmei adaptation drama. Appearing on a variety show like this would only reinforce the public's existing associations with him. In the future, he might even struggle to land roles in straight romance dramas.
If anyone else had acted so capriciously, the company would undoubtedly have given them a hard time. But the company wasn't doing as well as it had a few years ago and couldn't afford to lose another top-tier star, so naturally, they still had to cater to Jiang Zhirui.
The whole mess had turned what should have been a perfectly good opportunity into something of a hot potato. After sending invitations to a whole round of potential guests, the production team discovered that everyone with even a modest degree of fame had more or less the same concerns as Jiang Zhirui. In the end, they still hadn't secured a replacement even with filming just around the corner. However, the production team didn't want to give up on having someone from the entertainment industry on the show, so they simply tossed the problem back to Luan Yi's company.
After weighing the pros and cons, Luan Yi's manager, Chen Fangfang, decided to send him. Compared with Jiang Zhirui, Luan Yi was only on par with him in terms of age. Their current standing in the industry, however, was worlds apart.
Her reasoning was that Luan Yi had been under her management for a long time. He had always been obedient and willing to work hard, and she also knew that his sexual orientation made him a suitable candidate. The guests invited to Love Time Difference were all outstanding figures in their respective industries. If Luan Yi managed to develop something with one of them, he would only stand to benefit.
She practically stopped just short of explicitly telling him to find himself a rich sugar daddy on the show.
But Luan Yi knew that good fortune didn't simply fall from the sky. Chen Fangfang was a smooth operator who had only emphasized the benefits. A seemingly good opportunity wasn't necessarily a good fit for everyone.
Love Time Difference had originally designed a particular persona for Jiang Zhirui, and he was supposed to play a significant role in the show's appeal. Now that he had pulled out at the last minute, the higher-ups at Octopus Platform were already furious. Whoever took his place would inevitably be handed the role of cannon fodder. Forget about exposure. They might not even get much screen time.
At the end of the day, he was simply going there to clean up someone else's mess.
Luan Yi had initially hesitated a little, but the moment he saw the fee Love Time Difference was offering him, he immediately surrendered to the power of capital.
Of course, Octopus Platform's offer couldn't compare to what Jiang Zhirui had been promised. Still, the money was enough for a low-profile nobody like Luan Yi to live comfortably without working for two whole years.
Luan Yi was a pretty laid-back person in almost every aspect of life. The only thing that could get him motivated was something he genuinely liked. Acting was his passion, and the lack of opportunities hadn't discouraged him.
As a bona fide salted fish, optimism was Luan Yi's defining trait.
Beforehand, Luan Yi had asked the staff member coordinating with him about the general filming process for Love Time Difference.
Like most dating shows, the program would put its guests together in a luxurious vacation villa, then arrange various games, dates, and other activities in the hope of sparking romantic tension among them within a short period. Whether those sparks were genuine was another matter. As long as the audience had something to ship while the show was airing, that was all that mattered. Once the program ended, who would care what happened to the guests?
With the mindset of someone who was destined to be cannon fodder, Luan Yi wasn't focused on the couples or the romantic moments that fans might squeal over. Instead, he found himself thinking about how beautiful the villas were in previous dating shows produced by Octopus Platform. They weren't just spacious and bright; they were also equipped with every imaginable amenity.
With the twin labels of cannon fodder and salted fish stamped firmly on his forehead, Luan Yi genuinely didn't believe he would find a boyfriend through the show. Given his awkward position, there was no telling how much screen time he would get after Octopus Platform's ruthless editing.
He might as well relax and treat the whole thing as a vacation in a luxury villa.
After briefly explaining all this background to his friend, the other person let out a curse. “Damn, your company really is full of scheming bastards! So you're replacing Jiang Zhirui as the sacrificial lamb? I've always said that guy was annoying.”
Luan Yi had thought this phone call was about to plunge into an endless sea of complaints. But then his friend suddenly paused, as if remembering something, and raised his voice. “Oh, right! I just remembered something. Since you're going on the show, do you have any inside information? I saw some gossip online earlier claiming that one of the guests is apparently a really big deal. His name is Wen Yang, and he seems to have some connection to Goodwin.”
Luan Yi was completely baffled by the question. He knew Goodwin, of course. It was a top luxury brand. But this was the first time he'd ever heard the name Wen Yang, so he had absolutely no information to offer. “I already told you I'm the sacrificial lamb. How would I know anything about the other guests in advance?”
The first episodes of Octopus Platform's previous dating shows had generally included introductory interviews about the guests' backgrounds. But because the schedule for Luan Yi's season was so tight, the production team had already filmed that segment with Jiang Zhirui. After Luan Yi stepped in as his replacement, nobody even informed him that such a segment was planned. They would probably just dig up a few clips from his previous acting roles online and use those to fill the gap.
Although filming was about to begin, Luan Yi hadn't even met the production team yet, let alone learned the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth thing about any of the other guests.
Still, after a moment's pause, his friend's words had piqued his curiosity. Just how big a deal are we talking about?
Luan Yi asked, “Which characters make up his name?”
“Wen as in news, and Yang as in scatter your ashes to the wind.”
“Fuck off! You really can't say anything nice, can you? May your ashes be scattered instead!” Muttering under his breath, Luan Yi opened Weibo and typed in the name. Sure enough, the first few highly relevant posts were gossip leaks that had started circulating online the previous day.
He casually clicked on one of the top posts, only to discover that it already had tens of thousands of comments.
Although the variety show had already begun its promotional campaign, a program that primarily featured ordinary people as guests should, in theory, have been filled with people who were practically unknown to the public.
Just how much buzz did this guest have to generate such a frenzy simply by being exposed before the show even aired?
Luan Yi clicked on the Weibo post with the highest level of discussion. A few eye-catching keywords immediately jumped out at him: mixed-race and old money.
“Whoa.” Luan Yi's eyes widened. His first thought was that if a guest of this caliber really was joining the show, then the production team had quite a remarkable degree of tolerance to have recruited a tiny nobody like him as cannon fodder.
His friend eagerly echoed him over the phone. “Impressive, right? Pretty damn impressive, huh?!”
According to the rumors, this guest was not only of mixed heritage from four countries, including China and spanning Europe and America, but also came from a family whose history, traced back a century or two, was filled with so many exceptional figures that you couldn't count them all on your fingers. These people had achieved extraordinary success and made their mark in various fields. The family maintained a low profile despite owning countless businesses, and had cultivated extensive connections and wielded considerable influence across multiple sectors of Western society.
Goodwin, one of today's leading ultra-luxury brands, was named after the family surname. It was one of the few Goodwin family enterprises that the general public was familiar with. As a result, the three syllables of Goodwin carried an aura of wealth and nobility on the internet today, embodying a kind of prestige that seemed to exist on an entirely different plane from ordinary life. Even people who knew absolutely nothing about this foreign family could understand the gulf between Wen Yang and an ordinary person. The name also immediately reminded Luan Yi of all those exclusive, high-end red-carpet events he had no hope of attending.
Although the expos contained no photographs of Wen Yang himself, it included plenty of pictures of prominent historical figures from the Goodwin family. Every single one of them looked like they had won the genetic lottery.
However, Luan Yi's amazement came to an abrupt halt. His gaze lingered on the keyword mixed heritage from four countries, and, by reflex, he recalled an embarrassing incident from his middle school days. Goosebumps instantly rose all over his body.
During the second semester of his eighth-grade year, Luan Yi had only recently discovered his own sexual orientation and was in a state of nervous excitement over this new realization. By chance, he had expanded his online social circle and added a netizen around his own age. The two of them chatted about everything from their everyday troubles to their dreams for the future. Once they exchanged a few subtle hints and realized they shared the same sexual orientation, they tacitly began an online romance.
In real life, Luan Yi didn't dare reveal this side of himself to anyone. Online, however, he was bold enough to let loose completely. Without having exchanged a single photo or video, he could call the other guy hubby over and over without even blushing.
His only problem was that, as their relationship deepened, his online husband repeatedly suggested meeting in person. He even confessed that he was a foreigner of mixed heritage from four countries. At the time, Luan Yi was already seeing stars from the pressure of preparing for his high school entrance exams. He had been hesitant about meeting in person anyway, but the moment the other guy claimed to be a foreigner of mixed heritage from four countries, Luan Yi immediately thought of the elaborate stories used by scammers in the social news reports he'd read. He began to suspect that the other person was about to ask him to pay for a plane ticket, after which his imagination jumped straight to a vivid scene of his parents taking turns beating the living daylights out of him.
What kind of foreigner of mixed heritage from four countries can type Chinese that fluently, anyway?
The middle-school version of Luan Yi went back and reviewed more than a year of their chat history. The more he read, the more alarm bells rang in his head. There was absolutely no way he could meet this person. But they had known each other for so long that he was genuinely afraid things would become awkward if he exposed the other guy as a scammer.
After thinking it over for a long time, Luan Yi finally told his online husband why they couldn't meet the next time the subject came up.
He lied and claimed that he had a terminal illness and was already in the final stages of treatment, barely clinging to life as he replied to messages. It took Luan Yi more than half a month to convince his online husband that this was true. Then he spent another month or so acting out the entire process of a terminally ill patient bidding farewell to the world, still reluctant to leave it behind.
Finally, he even impersonated his own mother to send the guy news of his death. Only after that did he quietly move the other person into his hidden-user list, turning his lingering guilt into motivation and throwing himself wholeheartedly into an intense period of studying.
The middle-school version of Luan Yi had thought himself an absolute genius. But whenever the high-school, university, and working-adult versions of Luan Yi thought back to this embarrassing chapter of his life, they wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die on the spot.
He had become so traumatized that even hearing the words mixed heritage from four countries was enough to give him goosebumps.
“If he's really joining the show, you might even get a chance to go on a date with him! I've never seen him before, but I'm already certain he's going to be ridiculously handsome.” His friend pulled Luan Yi out of his memories, their voice rising with excitement once more. “Luan Yi, Luan Yi! This is what they call your luck finally turning around! At the beginning of the year, I dragged you along to burn incense at a temple, and who was it that refused a hundred times over, insisting he was a materialist? Once you marry into a wealthy family, you absolutely cannot forget about me!”
Hearing his friend veer off into increasingly ridiculous territory, Luan Yi immediately cut them off. “Hey, hey, hey! How many times have I told you to stop talking nonsense? Besides, I don't think Love Time Difference could possibly get a guest of that caliber. Maybe it's just a publicity stunt or some kind of misunderstanding.”
Just then, his phone notified him of another incoming call. Luan Yi glanced at the screen and said to his friend, “Oh, my manager's calling. She's probably already here. I'll hang up for now.”
He switched calls and had barely managed a single “Hello?” when Chen Fangfang, apparently too impatient to bother with greetings, spoke in a straightforward, cool tone. “If you're packed, come downstairs. I'm outside your building.”
Luan Yi agreed, snapped his suitcase shut, and grabbed his bag. “Coming, Chen-jie. I'll be right down.”
Love Time Difference was being filmed at a vacation villa in the outskirts of S City. Chen Fangfang had come in person to take Luan Yi there, and along the way, she took the opportunity to remind him of a few things. “President Zhang even asked me this morning about you going on the show today. He isn't expecting you to stand out or do anything particularly impressive. Just don't screw things up.”
In plain language, she was telling him to do a good job playing the cannon fodder.
“As for the production team, do your best to cooperate with whatever they ask of you.”
That was another way of telling him to put up with it even if they bullied him.
Luan Yi nodded in understanding. Remembering his recent conversation with his friend about Wen Yang, he couldn't help asking Chen Fangfang, “Chen-jie, is that guest everyone's talking about online—the one who's supposedly of mixed heritage from four countries—actually real?”
Chen Fangfang glanced at him while driving. “More or less.”
This time, it was Luan Yi's turn to be astonished. “So it's actually true? The last time I saw such an outrageous personal introduction was…”
Chen Fangfang shot him a glance and casually asked, “Was what?”
His middle-school online romance with a scammer claiming to be of mixed heritage from four countries, followed by his own cowardly disappearance through a fake death—this was a piece of history he would never, ever tell anyone about in his entire life. Otherwise, the God of Embarrassment would surely descend upon him and strike him dead on the spot.
Luan Yi cut off the real ending to his sentence and put on a solemn, dignified expression as he covered his tracks. “Ahem. Of course, it was in a novel.”
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