Hidden cameras were a common element in variety shows, and it wasn’t easy to fool someone like Zhu Lianzhen, who had been in the entertainment industry for years. As long as he stayed even slightly alert, he could see through it. Unfortunately, he relied too much on intuition—once he came up with a reasonable explanation for something illogical, he found it hard to question it again afterward.
Zhu Lianzhen had been curious about how the mirror’s voice system worked. Since he couldn’t find a charging port, he searched online for other wireless accessories.
“You’ve been staring at the mirror for ages—still not done admiring yourself?” Ji Yunting commented as he came downstairs to get a drink.
“I’m adjusting the position. I feel like it’s hung too low,” Zhu Lianzhen said, making up an excuse to buy more time to figure it out.
After studying it for nearly half an hour, the more he looked at it, the more it seemed like an ordinary mirror. It was as if the glowing and talking he’d seen earlier had just been his imagination. But Zhu Lianzhen wasn’t shaken. He took a photo and sent it to his assistant.
Ah-Xu didn’t even open the image before replying with praise: “Boss looks so handsome!”
“I’m not asking for compliments. Help me find out if there are any models like this.”
Ah-Xu: “Isn’t this just one of those cheap ones you can get installed for a few dozen yuan?”
“It’s different.” Zhu Lianzhen corrected her. “This one has a built-in voice assistant, but now I can’t find the charger.”
Ah-Xu only half understood. She rarely paid attention to electronics and had no idea where Zhu Lianzhen had gotten this odd thing. She browsed several international shopping platforms but couldn’t find anything similar, so she started checking foreign websites for more information.
Suddenly, a message window popped up at the top of her screen. Ah-Xu hesitated for a moment, then remembered it was Tan Qing’s WeChat account.
If he was reaching out on his own, it definitely had something to do with Zhu Lianzhen. Curious, Ah-Xu started chatting with him and soon found out the truth about the hidden camera from Tan Qing.
There was still some time before Zhu Lianzhen’s birthday, but everyone had already begun setting things up early, letting him gradually get used to the strange things happening around him. This way, they could effectively prevent him from catching on.
It couldn’t be too over-the-top, either. For instance, the “smart voice mirror” could only last for one night. The next day, they had to redirect Zhu Lianzhen’s attention elsewhere.
That morning, Zhu Lianzhen decided to properly deal with Naisi. Lately, everyone had been going out frequently for work, and leaving the cat alone in the dorm had made it prone to causing trouble. He started by training it to stay in the designated play area, even using a plush toy to act out a “disobedience gets punished” scenario.
As he sat on the floor to rest for a bit, his gaze unintentionally drifted toward the entryway. He noticed the mirror on the wall flicker with light again.
Zhu Lianzhen paused to take a closer look, then got up and walked over, discovering that the mirror really had lit up again.
“Did any of you charge the mirror?” he asked in the group chat.
Ji Yunting: “It can be charged?”
Koty: “What happens if it runs out of power—does it stop reflecting?”
Asking was useless. Zhu Lianzhen simply knocked on the mirror, trying to wake up the voice assistant. “Activate, activate.”
At that moment, Tan Qing had just connected the microphone upstairs, while Fu Rong was in another room controlling the lights via the monitor. After a few seconds, the mirror finally responded to Zhu Lianzhen’s command, “I’m here.”
“How—much—battery—do—you—have—left?” Zhu Lianzhen, worried it wouldn’t understand, deliberately slowed his speech and enunciated every word.
That only made Tan Qing want to mess with him. The mirror replied, “Sorry, please say that again.”
Zhu Lianzhen kept his patience. “How much battery do you have left?”
“Sorry, I didn’t understand.”
Zhu Lianzhen pinched the collar of his pajamas and asked, “How does this outfit look?”
This time, the mirror responded instantly, “Very cute.”
“Huh?” That adjective made Zhu Lianzhen curl his lips in distaste. Wanting to show off the voice feature to the others, he sent a message in the group chat, calling them downstairs.
Koty was the first to appear, standing in the second-floor hallway and looking down. “What is it?”
“Come on down.” Zhu Lianzhen looked up and waved at him. “I’ve got something fun to show you.”
Koty was worried he might burst out laughing, but braced himself and came downstairs, stopping in front of the mirror. Zhu Lianzhen stepped aside and grinned. “If you think he’s ugly, light up—whoa.”
Zhu Lianzhen was blinded by a sudden bright flash of light.
“Hey!” Koty, who was selected every year as one of the “100 Most Beautiful Faces in the World,” stared straight at the mini camera behind the mirror. One look, and he could already tell it was Fu Rong’s handiwork.
Zhu Lianzhen burst out laughing. Koty had no choice but to play dumb. “What even is this? Voice-activated lights?”
“It’s got smart voice control, like Siri,” Zhu Lianzhen said. “The voice sounds really nice too, and it’s female.”
“Oh yeah? Have it say something.” Koty pretended to be interested.
Zhu Lianzhen spoke clearly to the mirror, “Tell me this spring and summer’s trending styles.”
There was a brief silence. Koty couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you using it like Google?”
“You don’t get it.” Zhu Lianzhen pushed him aside. “Go away. It doesn’t want to talk to you. It only responds when I’m here.”
“This is just that piece of junk you picked up from the show crew, isn’t it?” Koty scoffed and walked off. As soon as he got upstairs, he reported to the group chat: “Zhu Lianzhen has lost it. He’s talking to a mirror. Someone save him!”
Zhu Lianzhen: “Screw off.”
But thinking about it more carefully, it was a bit strange. He was the only one who had heard the mirror talk. Whenever someone else stood in front of it, the voice function seemed to stop working.
“You really know how to judge by appearances.” Zhu Lianzhen knocked the mirror with satisfaction.
Maybe it used some kind of new charging method. Zhu Lianzhen wasn’t in any rush to figure it out—he could always take it apart and look inside once it actually ran out of power.
He often asked the mirror for feedback before heading out, but it rarely responded. And when it did, it was always something like, “You’re the most handsome!” or “You’re so cute.” He got bored quickly and lost interest.
Until the day before his birthday. When Zhu Lianzhen walked in, he accidentally tripped over a cardboard box lying across the entryway. Then he heard the mirror ask with concern, “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Zhu Lianzhen replied instinctively, then suddenly froze. “You can even recognize when someone falls?”
“Don’t use your phone while walking.”
It even lectured him.
Zhu Lianzhen stood up and leaned in to examine it, unable to stop himself from saying, “Sometimes you don’t seem that dumb for an AI.”
A line like that, in the context of a hidden-camera prank, was undoubtedly a red flag. It meant the target might be starting to sense something. Everyone watching the monitor in the other room fell silent at once, waiting to see what Zhu Lianzhen would do next.
“New shoes. Cool, right?” He proudly stepped forward to show them off.
—Of course.
Everyone let out a sigh of relief.
After dinner, the cameraman arrived with the equipment. That night was Acemon’s first time going live on the fan club’s official site, so they had to go through the setup process first. The moment the stream went live, the chat exploded—member names in five different colors came flooding in, completely taking over the screen.
“Stop spamming the comments.” Zhu Lianzhen pretended to threaten, “If you keep posting meaningless stuff, I’m turning off the chat.”
The fans ignored him entirely and threw in even more colors just to mess with him.
[We’re posting anyway!]
[Bossy lady, I’m in love!]
Zhu Lianzhen gritted his teeth in frustration, but there was nothing he could do about them.
A bit later, the members sat in a row and took turns greeting the fans.
The director handed the script to the leader, asking him to guide the members through the topics in order. Ji Yunting looked down, skimming through it as he muttered, “First up: unforgettable moments from the past… Hmm, you’ll see all that in the “Shake” documentary next week. If you buy the special edition EP, it comes with a DVD, so we hope you’ll check it out.”
The livestream that day was mostly about sharing bits of daily life in the dorm with fans, but the highlight was the surprise birthday celebration for Zhu Lianzhen. Due to time constraints, that part had to take place before midnight.
When he was little, Zhu Lianzhen used to really look forward to his birthday. No matter how busy his parents were, they would always put everything aside on that day to spend time with him. But as he got older, he gradually lost interest. When the company celebrated his birthday, it was mainly for publicity. When fans celebrated, it was inevitably tied to the vanity of outshining other idols with bigger support. Every second of his birthday no longer belonged to him; it had become just another full-on workday.
Zhu Lianzhen leaned sideways against the sofa, waiting for his teammates to unveil the so-called “birthday surprise.” To be honest, he wasn’t expecting anything special. There was no way they had prepared anything touching—it’d probably just be a limited-edition gaming console or something like that.
Koty picked up the TV remote and told him, “To make you happy, we started setting this up more than ten days ago.”
“Whoa, there’s even a video?” Zhu Lianzhen found it hard to believe they had put that much effort into it.
The screen lit up, and he saw the other four members sitting on a bus, facing the camera and greeting him. “Zhu Lianzhen, are you watching?”
“What is this…” Zhu Lianzhen immediately sensed something was off from the mischievous smiles on their faces. When he turned to look at the ones beside him, they looked even more suspicious.
On the TV, Tan Qing spoke sincerely. “If everything went as planned, you should be watching this after the 20th. We just finished filming, and you’re still in the dressing room—”
Koty gave a thumbs-up to the camera. “You’re really good at cooking.”
Zhu Lianzhen quickly recognized the outfits they were wearing from the day they filmed the variety show. “What the hell? Did you guys hide something from me that day?”
Just as he finished speaking, the screen switched to the dressing room. The camera angle was extremely well-hidden, and with his experience, Zhu Lianzhen immediately realized it was a hidden camera segment. “Damn, when did you guys…”
In the video, the stylist left the room, and he was alone, quietly looking down at his phone. Suddenly, a dressing mirror at the edge of the screen lit up. His eyes were drawn to it, and he walked over to straighten it.
The mirror even got a solo close-up. Zhu Lianzhen was briefly surprised, then suddenly put it all together.
“This was a prop you guys prepared in advance?!”
He instinctively raised a hand to cover his mouth, which had dropped open in shock. The footage continued into another scene. The members were on the bus, surrounded by sound equipment. Tan Qing held a voice changer, speaking softly while watching the monitor. “Um… could you not leave me upside down?”
Back in the dressing room footage, Zhu Lianzhen was shown clearly startled by the sudden female voice. He shouted, “Who’s there?” and the moment his phone dropped to the floor was even highlighted in post-production with a red circle to emphasize his panic.
“STOP, STOP, STOP!” Zhu Lianzhen’s face turned bright red. He remembered the situation all too vividly and lunged to snatch the remote out of Koty’s hand. “Turn it off! You f—”
Then he abruptly remembered this was a livestream and swallowed the curse word mid-sentence.
Glancing back at the fan club chat, he saw the comment section completely flooded with “hahahahahahaha.” Zhu Lianzhen jabbed furiously at the camera. “Why aren’t you spamming the comments now?! Do it! Do it!”
Koty couldn’t stop laughing. “Quick, hold him down!”
Suddenly, someone wrapped an arm tightly around Zhu Lianzhen’s waist, and in the next second, he lost his balance and fell back onto the sofa. He tried to wriggle free from Tan Qing’s grip, but the moment he saw his TV self asking the mirror, “Am I handsome?” his sense of shame completely overwhelmed him. With a loud “AHH!” he scrambled to cover his eyes, completely forgetting he was still leaning against Tan Qing’s chest.
In a desperate move, he started shouting over the TV to block out the sound, but Koty deliberately turned the volume up, replaying all his mutterings to the mirror from the past few days.
Zhu Lianzhen wanted nothing more than to vanish from the face of the earth and escape this public execution. He kept his face buried in his hands, refusing to face reality. The strong scent of cologne filled his nose, and a gentle hand came to rest on his head, softly ruffling his hair.
A deep voice broke through every one of his mental defenses. “Very cute, Xiao Zhu. Look at yourself.”
Blushing furiously, Zhu Lianzhen collapsed in Tan Qing’s arms. As if possessed, he loosened his fingers just enough to peek at the TV through the gaps.
Just in time to see himself standing in front of the mirror, solemnly holding up his phone and calling out to Siri, challenging the two voice assistants to battle it out.
“—Screw off!”
