TL: Hua
After announcing the rules, the director immediately gathered all the trainees and invited the mentors onto the stage.
The trainees stood behind their respective mentors according to their teams.
Once everyone was in place, the MV began to play on the big screen.
The production team played four songs in total, which were the tracks the trainees would perform for their first live show.
The theme of this assessment was singing and dancing, so while the four songs were of different genres, they all required both.
After watching the videos, the trainees from the other teams had already started discussing which dance suited their team best and which song to choose.
However, the trainees on Lin Yanran’s team just looked at each other, and no one wanted to speak.
Except for Xia Xingxing, the other 14 trainees on their team were all people who had been eliminated from other teams and were forcibly put together.
Even though they had vocalists, dancers, and rappers, they were all one-trick ponies.
Moreover, the overall style of the team was mismatched and didn’t blend well. None of the songs seemed to fit them.
After they finished watching the videos, the production team placed four mystery boxes in the center of the stage, saying that each team should send one person to draw a box.
If two teams got the same color, they would compete against each other.
This matter, which hinged on the team’s fate, was something no one dared to attempt lightly.
After all, if they were unlucky and drew a particularly strong team, it would be a death sentence.
But despite the hesitation, someone had to go.
After a quick discussion, each team sent a representative.
Pei Luo’s team sent Xuan Yihan, and Lin Yanran’s team sent Gao Yu.
With a signal from the director, the four trainee representatives quickly ran toward the mystery boxes they had their eyes on.
Gao Yu was the fastest and arrived first.
He hesitated for a moment in front of the four boxes, then looked back at his teammates.
“Pick the middle one! The middle one!”
Hearing his team’s shouts, Gao Yu reached for the middle box.
But the representative from Tangtang’s team was quick-witted. The moment he arrived, he snatched the middle one.
The person from Han Zhe’s team followed suit and grabbed another one.
Gao Yu had no choice but to pick one of the two remaining boxes at random.
He opened his box and found a small red ball inside.
Beside him, Xuan Yihan also opened his box.
The moment he saw the color of the ball, Xuan Yihan’s eyes lit up.
He slowly took the ball out and waved it triumphantly at his teammates.
The trainees on Pei Luo’s team erupted in a deafening cheer after seeing the color.
“Wow, red!!!!”
“Hanhan is awesome!”
“Is this the best possible outcome?!”
Hearing the cheers from Pei Luo’s team, Gao Yu immediately dropped to his knees, his head in his hands, full of regret.
Of all the teams to draw, he had to draw the best one.
Pei Luo’s group, known as the “half” of Group A, was mostly composed of powerhouses from classes A and B. Their strength was undeniable.
Meanwhile, Yanran’s team’s lineup, though some were decent, was like a patchwork of “keep trying” students compared to an elite, hand-picked rocket science class.
The gap was enormous.
What kind of luck is this!
Gao Yu walked back to his team dejectedly, apologizing to everyone.
“Sorry…”
His teammates, already feeling defeated and mentally prepared to be eliminated in the next episode, gave him a halfhearted consolation. “It’s all based on luck. There’s nothing you can do.”
Lin Yanran didn’t say anything, just patted Gao Yu on the shoulder, signaling for him to cheer up.
But as soon as his hand touched him, Gao Yu pulled away.
Since the other person was unwilling to accept his goodwill, Lin Yanran didn’t press the matter.
After the PK opponents were decided, the production team continued with their mischief.
The director announced through a megaphone that the song for each team’s performance also had to be drawn from a box.
Having just gone through the uncertain experience of drawing a mystery box, the trainees instantly became tense again.
“This time, the song will be drawn by the mentors.”
After the announcement, the director called out Lin Yanran’s name.
“Yanran, you go first.”
Lin Yanran walked to the director and quickly scanned the four mystery boxes in front of him.
Seeing him looking at the boxes, the director asked him, “Have you thought about which song to draw?”
Lin Yanran smiled and looked at his team. “You should ask my team members.”
The camera turned to the trainees, who spoke in unison, “Anything but ‘Not Me,’ everything else is fine.”
After the four songs were played, “Not Me” was unanimously considered the one everyone wanted to avoid the most.
The song was not only difficult to sing, but the choreography was also very challenging.
And the strangest part was that despite being so difficult, the overall performance effect was not as impressive as the other three songs.
It was a thankless task.
No one wanted to be unlucky enough to draw this song.
“So your team doesn’t want to draw ‘Not Me,'” the director said, looking at Lin Yanran. “Then I wish you good luck.”
Lin Yanran nodded. Just as he was about to draw, he saw Xia Xingxing praying with his hands together.
As he prayed, he murmured, “Idol, you can do it. Not ‘Not Me.'”
Not only Xia Xingxing, but several other trainees also focused their hopeful gazes on him, as if he were the hope of their entire village.
Before coming up, Lin Yanran didn’t think there was a big issue. To him, all the songs were more or less the same.
But now that everyone was so nervous and despised “Not Me”…
Well, if that’s the case…
Lin Yanran pulled back his hand from the box and raised it toward the director.
“Director, can I wash my hands first?”
The director was stunned and asked, “Why wash your hands?”
Lin Yanran explained with a serious expression, “To wash away the bad luck.”
Director: …
Trainees: ???
Staff filming offstage: Hahahahahahaha
The director finally understood what Lin Yanran meant after hearing the laughter and flat-out refused, “No.”
“Alright.”
Lin Yanran agreed, but he didn’t draw immediately. Instead, he took an individually wrapped wet wipe from his bag.
Director: ???
Lin Yanran lowered his head, took out the wet wipe, and earnestly and devoutly wiped his hands before picking up a mystery box and opening it.
The trainees on Lin Yanran’s team saw their mentor putting in so much effort to avoid drawing “Not Me” and couldn’t help but feel a glimmer of hope.
Their team had been unlucky enough today. Could they really be even more unlucky and get “Not Me”?
So everyone held their breath and waited for the final answer.
As it turned out, being even more unlucky was entirely possible.
After all, not washing your hands is not washing your hands; wiping them with a wet wipe wouldn’t help.
Looking at the big words “Not Me” in Lin Yanran’s hand, his entire team was so devastated that only two words came to mind.
Oh well…
We’re screwed.
Even fate had arranged an elimination script for them.
After the drawing, the day’s filming ended.
To ensure that everyone had exactly three days to practice, the production team did not give the trainees the demo videos for their songs and would instead distribute them uniformly the next morning at 8 a.m.
Lin Yanran saw that everyone was very down and knew that too many empty words wouldn’t truly comfort them, so he told them to go back and get some rest.
Xia Xingxing was obedient and happily began to soak his feet as soon as he returned to the dorm, following in his idol’s wellness footsteps.
Gao Yu and Jin Letian, who were also in the same team, saw Xia Xingxing soaking his feet and immediately kicked over the foot spas Lin Yanran had given them.
Xia Xingxing was furious when he saw this and quickly picked up the two foot spas.
“This is a gift from Teacher Yanran. What’s wrong with you guys?”
Now having the worst hand of cards, Gao Yu, who felt he was going to be eliminated anyway, was too lazy to pretend to be friendly and directly confronted Xia Xingxing.
“They’re my things. I’ll do whatever I want with them. What’s it to you? We got such a terrible song. Can’t I even vent my frustration?”
Jin Letian also sneered, “The other teams have already started practicing, but our team is told to rest first. Do you really think that soaking our feet will keep us in the competition?”
It was obvious that the two of them were taking out all their frustration on Lin Yanran.
The other trainees in the dorm, not wanting to make the atmosphere so ugly, tried to comfort them, “Teacher Yanran didn’t want to draw this song for us either.”
“Don’t talk like that. The A-class trainees in the other teams learn things quickly. I saw many of them could dance along just by watching the video. We don’t have that foundation, so we can’t compare. Let’s just rest for now, so we have the energy to train tomorrow.”
“Yeah, don’t argue.”
With the other trainees’ intervention and with the camera crew from the director’s team coming to film again, the two finally stopped talking.
However, the unpleasant atmosphere did not dissipate and continued to linger the next day.
At eight o’clock the next morning, the production team gave them the video for “Not Me” and told the trainees to practice on their own.
After receiving the video, they were told that they had to learn it by themselves first, and their mentor would only be allowed to come and guide them in the afternoon.
The trainees, who had no hope for Lin Yanran anyway, simply nodded indifferently.
Gao Yu even started laughing with Jin Letian. “What’s the difference if he’s here or not?”
The pressure in the practice room was very low.
Besides the constant sound of “Not Me” playing, the trainees were almost unwilling to talk to each other. They just mechanically followed the video and practiced over and over again.
After a whole day of repetitive practice, the results were not good.
The problems of a team that had been forcefully thrown together were now completely exposed.
Because during practice, there was almost no communication between them, and everyone was practicing on their own.
So now, when they came together, each person was like a random stranger pulled off the street to form a group. They could only do well in what they were good at. When they were together as a group, there was no chemistry, and they simply couldn’t work as a cohesive unit.
The dancers had the choreography down, but singing was a big problem.
The vocalists were perfect at singing, but they couldn’t remember all the dance moves yet.
The rappers were even worse. They weren’t good at either, and everything they did was barely passable.
After a day of practicing, the progress of the 15 people was incredibly slow, and they couldn’t even perform the choreography together once.
After a day of fruitless work, they finally realized the problem.
They were a disorganized mess, with no cohesion at all.
“Maybe we should decide on the center and the leader,” someone suggested during a break to help them work together a little better.
Xia Xingxing, however, shook his head in disagreement. “Didn’t the production team say we should wait for the mentor to come and discuss it together? Teacher Yanran will be here soon. Let’s wait for him.”
Gao Yu scoffed and threw the lyric book in his hand. “What’s the point of him coming? He’s bad at both singing and dancing. Do you really think he can help us?”
Lin Yanran, who had just arrived at the door of the practice room, heard Gao Yu’s words.
