What happened in the music classroom soon reached Shen Huai’s ears and he was somewhat surprised.

Ming Wei asked, “Is it necessary to force the lead singer to be changed?”

“No need.” Shen Huai shook his head and said, “Since she has made up her mind, let’s do as she says.”

“But…”

Ming Wei wondered for a bit why Shen Huai would sign Xia Shiyu, an artist who was already out of date and had a bad reputation. She was not like Ye Cang, but had still enjoyed high popularity. Moreover, Shen Huai was indulging her and seemed to trust in her strength.

Shen Huai also saw Ming Wei’s puzzled expression and said with a smile, “After two episodes, you will understand.”

Ming Wei was curious and unconsciously started paying more attention to news about “National Idol”.

In fact, when Xia Shiyu signed a contract with Shen Huai and decided to participate in the recording of “National Idol”, there was a discussion on the Internet.

These days, Zhou Feiyang’s matter had been on fire, which naturally included the previous case with Xia Shiyu. Although there were still some people who spoke up for Xia Shiyu, the fixed impression was not so easy to eliminate. Some people even began questioning the program group of “National Idol”.

After all this noise, the popularity of the program shot up, but Xia Shiyu’s situation was not so good.

The photos from that year and the interviews with classmates and teachers were shown again and commented on every day.

An ordinary person might not have been able to stand it for a long time, but Xia Shiyu was very calm. She only practiced dancing and singing every day. Apart from not being able to eat fat intestines, she hardly had any other grievances and nothing could affect her.

The other three members of the team, after Xia Shiyu gave Lena the chance to be the lead singer, completely changed their attitude towards her. None of them mentioned anything about the things on the Internet.

In this fashion it was soon time for the recording.

 

–

 

At six o’clock on the recording day, the company specially sent a car to drive the four girls to the recording site. There they would start a three-month closed training, if they could make it to the end.

The four girls verified their identities, walked into the recording site and were immediately shocked.

The whole venue was full of young and beautiful girls. It made people dizzy after a single glance.

Among them, there were trainees from large brokerage companies. Most of them were wearing the same style of clothing and looked very neat. There were also individual trainees from small companies and those found by program groups, which were more casual by comparison.

When the four of them came in, the chatter at the scene seemed to pause for a while, followed by a more vivid discussion.

“She is Xia Shiyu?”

“How brave! She is coming to this show, even though she is scolded so badly on the Internet…”

“How old is she? Isn’t she nearly 25? Isn’t she a bit old?”

“Are there any fans of old, ugly aunties with a dirty history….”

Lena was so furious that she was about to go teach these people a lesson but was stopped by Yao Xuetong, who motioned to her to take a look at Xia Shiyu.

They saw that Xia Shiyu was calm as she directly walked in front of these girls, who no longer dared to say anything.

Xia Shiyu was very relaxed as she looked over the group of girls, before finally looking at the person who had been gossiping most happily before. “Ying Yuan Company, Wang Can?”

The girl named Wang Can quickly covered the nameplate on her chest and said, “What…. What do you want?”

Xia Shiyu showed a sweet smile. “You haven’t made your debut yet, have you?”

The group of girls: “…”

If they had made their debut, who would come to fight here!

Xia Shiyu pointed to herself. “I made my debut three years ago. According to the rules in this circle, you should at least call me senior, right? What? Didn’t they give you etiquette lessons in your company?”

The faces of the girls suddenly turned red. They only thought that Xia Shiyu was outdated and entangled in vicious rumours. However, they forgot that as a singer, her status was far higher than that of a trainee.

The idol profession came from Japan and Korea. These two countries paid attention to hierarchical order. So after this profession came to China it was inevitably affected by this attitude, which had become a kind of established rule.

If they were popular, they naturally could be exempted from this kind of restriction. But as lowest level trainees, even if they didn’t want to, they could only obediently call her “senior”.

Xia Shiyu’s eyes swept over some other girls. Almost all of them were undebuted trainees. When she looked at them, they could only bow their heads and call her “senior”.

Xia Shiyu hooked the corners of her lips and walked directly in front of a group of girls with their heads down.

The three people who watched this scene from behind: “…”

Tian Sisi covered her mouth and whispered, “Sister Xia is so awesome!”

Lena frowned. “If she can teach people a lesson, just teach them a lesson. Why would she want to do this? Isn’t this only going to make the public angry?”

“She doesn’t need to be liked by everyone,” Yao Xuetong said lightly. “She just needs to be strong enough.”

Yao Xuetong said that and took the lead in keeping up with Xia Shiyu’s pace.

She was very clear that from the moment she came here, all the people at the scene were her rivals, including her former teammates. Only the strongest ones and those who could last till the end were qualified to have teammates.

 

–

 

The episode passed quickly, and the recording began. The girls were called to the recording hall in groups.

When they were inside, Zhang Li came out from behind the stage and introduced the mentors. There were four mentors in total: creative mentor Ye Cang, dance instructor Anna, and the vocal instructors Tang Ruoyi and Qiu Jie.

Except for Anna, the other two were old acquaintances of Ye Cang’s. Qiu Jie punched Ye Cang as soon as he saw him. “Yes, you can! You won the Colleen Awards and you didn’t even invite this brother for dinner and wine!” 

Ye Cang laughed. “Please come after recording the program.”

Qiu Jie: “That’s more like it!”

Compared with the careless Qiu Jie, Tang Ruoyi’s attitude was obviously colder. Although she appreciated Ye Cang at the beginning, she was a member of Huayue after all. Now that the two sides were in opposition, she was more or less affected.

Tang Ruoyi shook hands with Ye Cang. “At the beginning, you were just a contestant. I didn’t expect that in a flash we would be sitting together as judges.”

When Ye Cang saw Tang Ruoyi’s attitude, he understood that she had some regrets in her heart, but he just smiled politely and said, “Yes, thanks for Teacher Tang’s help and appreciation. I will always remember it.”

Tang Ruoyi was aware that he already knew the inside story of her invitation to Huayue. Sighting gently she didn’t say anything more.

As soon as the four appeared before the stage, they immediately triggered a scream from the girls. Until they sat in the jury seats, the screams didn’t stop.

Zhang Li could only manually signal to them to be quiet, and then to the props team. All she heard was a “crash”, and the curtain behind the girls’ seats fell down, and they noticed that there was another row of seats behind them.

The seats were in the shape of a pyramid, with a pink throne on top, then two, three and four seats in each row underneath. There were 10 seats in total, surrounded by flowers and pink balloons, looking very romantic.

All the girls made a “wow” sound.

Zhang Li said, “The ten seats there are all podium positions. You need to show your charm to the fans and win their love before you can sit in this position. Today is the first opportunity for you to perform before the fans. Please seize this opportunity!”

With that, Zhang Li left the stage to the four mentors.

Since Qiu Jie took part in “Travel with History” his hosting skills had greatly increased and he was in charge of this part.

The girls performed in groups.

Only in the past three groups did Ye Cang and the rest unconsciously raise their eyebrows. At present, the performance of the groups on stage was too poor. Almost all of them had big white voices, and their dancing was very simple. Even if the domestic idol market had just been established, their performance was simply too poor.

Even Xia Shiyu frowned slightly in her seat. She could not imagine that the standard of these trainees was so poor. Compared with the singing and dancing skills from her time, the level had dropped significantly in recent years.

Fortunately, excellent contestants soon appeared, and the show started getting better.

At first, the girls at the scene were able to maintain their image and sit quietly, but as time went on, some of them could not keep up it anymore. They started yawning, some of them moved around in their seats, and others began chatting with each other.

Tian Sisi couldn’t hold on for a long time. Her head fell on Yao Xuetong’ shoulder, and Lena slumped sleepily on her chair. Even Yao Xuetong could not help but secretly cover her mouth and yawn. Only Xia Shiyu continued sitting upright since she sat down, which was almost up to the standard of a stewardess.

Tian Sisi couldn’t help asking, “Sister Xia, aren’t you tired?”

Xia Shiyu was stunned. “It’s alright.”

When she was in the company in her last life, she was always taught to show her best in front of the camera. She had been used to it for so many years and even though she changed her body, she had brought this habit over.

Not to mention sitting for hours, it was normal for her to stand like this for hours.

All three of them couldn’t help but give her a thumbs up. Then Xia Shiyu seemed to sense something and lowered her voice. “Sit properly, there is a camera.”

The girls hurriedly sat up straight. This scene was captured on camera and transmitted to the broadcast station.

At this moment, Zhang Li was standing behind the director, looking at all these girls sitting askew, and couldn’t help frowning. “Have none of these trainees been to class? How long did it take for them to sit still?”

The director next to her smiled and said, “They are all teenage girls, and they are just lively. Don’t be too harsh!”

Zhang Li didn’t speak. She went to Japan and Korea to study before. Their management was very strict. Idols even needed to practice the angle of their smile. Although Zhang Li thought it was a bit too harsh, compared with the domestic sloppiness, she couldn’t help sighing secretly.

At this moment, the camera showed four girls with Xia Shiyu in the middle.

Zhang Li’s eyes suddenly lit up.

Xia Shiyu was very sensitive to the camera lens and could always remind her team members to sit up straight before the camera sweeped over.

When the camera turned around, Xia Shiyu’s eyebrows were slightly raised, the smile on her face was sweet and natural. Compared with the girl who was yawning behind her, or the sleepy one, or the one who was retouching her makeup, she was glowing all over.

“Stop!”

Zhang Li hurriedly signaled the cameraman to stay on them and let the director cut out Xia Shiyu’s previous shot.

The picture was played at a high speed, but Xia Shiyu, except for a slight change in her sitting posture, didn’t even bend her back. If nothing else, this perseverance alone was enough for Zhang Li to be impressed with her.

After watching this video, Zhang Li fixed her eyes on Xia Shiyu’s smiling face. 

In terms of appearance, there were many contestants present who were not inferior to her. However, they all paled before this smiling face. Xia Shiyu seemed to be very familiar with the camera lens. While others were still overcoming their fear of the camera, she already knew how to use the camera to demonstrate her charm.

This was the ability of top idols!

Zhang Li pondered for a long time, and finally made up her mind. “Ask the cameraman to film her.”

The director was frightened. “Sister Zhang, she hasn’t started performing yet. Is it time to focus on her now?”

Zhang Li nodded. “Yes, she is probably the key to success for our show.”

As the director arranged for it, he joked, “Sister Zhang is so optimistic about her?”

“Yes!” Zhang Li sighed.

“Some people are born to be idols.”

Edited by : LuLu

Proofreader: Taalia

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