Edited by Noks

The moment Lu Xiuhe saw Zuo Zhen on the same flight back to Manyang as him, he almost jumped out of his seat.

After their encounter at last night’s gala, Lu Xiuhe had pretty much admitted defeat and run away. Later, Zuo Zhen had sent him a lot of messages, all of which were very short, consisting of just one emoticon or a punctuation mark. Lu Xiuhe didn’t reply to any of them, even though he had held his cell phone and remained awake until three o’clock in the middle of the night. No matter how he tossed and turned, he couldn’t fall asleep, so at last, he grit his teeth and sent a reply: I’m flying back tomorrow morning. If you have anything else to talk about, bro, we’ll chat later.

After sending this, he immediately added: Anything else means matters like borrowing money and such.

Just after he sent that message, he thought he was being pretty stupid. No matter how bad the situation became for Zuo Zhen, he would still be richer than Lu Xiuhe.

After sending the message though, he seemed as if the big stone weighing on his heart had disappeared, and so, while still holding his cellphone, he fell asleep within two minutes.

Upon waking up and finding out that Zuo Zhen hadn’t replied, Lu Xiuhe was quite surprised.

Along with this surprise came a slight feeling of discomfort in his heart.

After all, in his eyes, the message he had sent meant telling Zhou Zen to never contact him again.

After Zuo Zhen sat down in his seat on the plane, Lu Xiuhe took out his cellphone and checked it, all the while swearing in his heart. Sure enough, regarding flights from Jincheng to Manyang, there was only one such flight this morning.

After the plane landed, he hurriedly took his luggage and quickly said goodbye to Yu Yan, and then rushed off the airplane. He moved fast, for he was in a hurry to leave, but also, couldn’t help looking back. He saw Zuo Zhen, who was wearing a mask, a pair of sunglasses, and a hat, fully decked out, walking slowly behind him, with some strands of distinctive pink hair poking out of the hat next to his ears.

It didn’t seem like he was trying to catch up with him.

Lu Xiuhe’s dad had said that he would come to pick him up, but he was still stuck on the road right now, so Lu Xiuhe had no way of leaving the airport for a while. He could only stand at the exit of the airport and wait. Turning around in his spot, he found that Zuo Zhen was also nearby. That person had already put on earphones, and was holding his cell phone and chatting with someone. He didn’t even glance at Lu Xiuhe.

…… It couldn’t be that he had imagined Zou Zhen’s favoritism towards himself? So he actually hadn’t come to Manyang for him?

Zuo Zhen didn’t look up from the beginning to the end, and Lu Xiuhe became more and more convinced that this conjecture made sense. Stars were so busy, and moreover, which one of them would take such pains over an online dating partner?

However, hadn’t that female anchor just said yesterday that the Pz group was very popular? Why wasn’t there even a person here to pick him up?

Although Zuo Zhen had covered himself up tightly, he was very tall and stood out in the crowd, which had attracted many people’s attention. A few girls beside him were already nervously putting their heads together and plotting.

Several times, Lu Xiuhe nearly walked forward to tell Zuo Zhen to go wait in the lobby. However, while he was still hesitating, his dad’s car had already arrived in front of him.

He kept standing still on that spot. Father Lu got out of the car, took his suitcase, and put it in the trunk. All through this, he kept up a stream of talk. “Why are you in a daze? Get in the car quickly, I still have to go and check out some newly arrived equipment. There’s something wrong with two machines, and we’ll have to change the hardware.”

Lu Xiuhe stuffily let out an “oh,” looked away, and sat in the passenger seat.

At the moment the car started, he couldn’t help but look up and steal a glance at Zuo Zhen through the window.

Zuo Zhen had, at some unknown point, already raised up his head. They looked at each other from afar, their gazes meeting through the window and the sunglasses.

Lu Xiuhe’s heart leaped. He quickly looked away and didn’t dare to look back again.

—

“He Zi, hurry up and login, we’re going to team up and play.”

Lu Xiuhe didn’t even lift up his head, clicking his mouse very loudly as he refused, “You guys play ba, I’m not playing.”

His three roommates exchanged glances with each other.

“Hey no, what’s the matter with you? You haven’t even been playing LoL these past few days? Have you given up on gaming la?”

Lu Xiuhe said, “I didn’t give up… am just burned out for now. I don’t want to play.”

“Cut it out.” The dorm leader clicked his tongue and said directly, “Did your face-to-face meeting not work out?”

Lu Xiuhe hadn’t hidden the matter about his online dating; the whole dormitory knew about it.

Lu Xiuhe’s hands paused as he replied, “…could count as that ba.”

“What’s the situation? It couldn’t be that she used a fake photo??”

“What nonsense are you talking about, do you think He Zi is the type of person who cares about appearances?”

“That can’t be certain, you don’t know how far these little girls will go now. Even their figures are bs, can’t even let us live.”

If it was just about a fake photo, that would be fine, Lu Xiuhe thought. He totally didn’t care what Zhenzhen looked like.

“It didn’t work out anyway, let it go,” Lu Xiuhe said.

The dorm leader saw clearly the picture displayed on his computer screen and was stunned. “No, He Zi, you didn’t get water in your brain in the middle of the night ba, what are you doing looking at this ah?”

Lu Xiuhe had opened up the Pz group’s latest MV, which was for one of their singles.

In the video, the man with pink hair was leaning against a wall, his chin slightly raised, his eyes disdainful and arrogant, and he was rapping smoothly.

“Nothing, just looking around.” Lu Xiuhe said, “Okay, you guys play your game and don’t mind me.”

After returning to Manyang, Lu Xiuhe had researched a lot of information about the Pz group.

The female anchor really hadn’t deceived people; the Pz group was really popular. The number of super fans on Weibo was shocking, and even a small matter like Member A’s lyrics being two sentences longer than Member B’s lyrics could be torn apart by fans all the way to making it onto Weibo’s number one hottest trending topic. Only after researching all this did Lu Xiuhe remember that he had also scrolled through a lot of Weibo posts about Pz before, but because those men had all been dressed in garish clothes, he hadn’t even bothered to take a second look at the time.

Zuo Zhen was the most popular member in the group, with the number of his Weibo fans able to completely crush those of all the other group members.

Only when he had replayed the MV for the 13th time did he finally realize that the dorm leader was shooting weird looks at him x3.

Lu Xiuhe turned off the computer, turned around, and climbed into bed.

He closed his eyes for ten minutes but couldn’t fall asleep. He resigned himself to his fate, took out his cellphone, and rather easily and familiarly, went to Zuo Zhen’s Weibo.

Zuo Zhen’s Weibo was very official; besides some notices and a few selfies, he didn’t have anything else posted on it at all. Lu Xiuhe didn’t even know how many times he had already looked through it, and he always had to scroll through a hundred or so ads before he could stop browsing it.

As he scrolled down the page, he assured himself that he didn’t have any other intentions, he just wanted to become knowledgeable about the current circumstances of idols in China.

After scrolling through quite a bit of the page, he clicked the back button and was about to exit Weibo when his attention was hooked by a trending search topic.

#Pz’s internal discord exposed#

Lu Xiuhe pretty much didn’t think about it before clicking into it.

[Entertainment Gossip: #Pz’s internal discord exposed# It’s said that Pz’s concert in Jincheng will be cancelled next month, because a member of the group who had occupied the C position a lot solely on the virtue of his identity has finally aroused public anger, and the other members couldn’t bear it anymore and also placed all their cards on the table.]

Lu Xiuhe didn’t really understand the content of this post, so he just read the comments.

“Hehe, the group leader has finally capsized. Every time I see him showing off his big face and boldly and self-righteously using his position as the team leader to stand in the C position for a new song, I feel nauseous. That pinkhead is just like a shuttlecock, and only empty-headed fans are able to close their eyes and cheer for him.”

?

Pink hair? Team leader?

The member of the group this person was fucking cursing out was Zuo Zhen??

A nameless fire burned in his heart, and Lu Xiuhe continued to scroll down the comments section while frowning. He found that most of the popular comments were pretty much cursing out Zuo Zhen. Obviously, this was just an obscure Weibo post, and was even one that no one was sure was true or not, but it was being interpreted by this group of people into carrying a hundred different meanings. They brought in their own prejudices against Zuo Zhen and created thousands of voluminous comments, all against him.

Only after scrolling to the end did he see the comments of Zuo Zhen’s fans.

“This blogger is so disgusting, coming in to slander Zhenzhen specifically. All the comments supporting Zhenzhen have been deleted by antis. Since it’s Spring Festival, there’s nothing to say, but I can only wish the blogger…… & %I#@le. :)”

After reading through several hundred such threads, Lu Xiuhe had become so angry that his liver started to hurt.

He suddenly remembered what Zuo Zhen had told him.

Of course, he hadn’t gone into any details; Zuo Zhen had never told him what his job was. He had only said that he was usually very busy, and that he had to carve out time for playing games. Most of the time he had used his laptop to play a few matches with Lu Xiuhe was when he had been on the road or during a halftime break.

Zuo Zhen had also said that he had done other jobs before, but the salary he earned at the time couldn’t support his seriously ill mother, so he had changed his job. Although the salary he received now wasn’t low, he was busy and tired.

He had said that he felt that he was working all the time, and that chatting with Lu Xiuhe had become the most relaxing part of his day.

He had said that he often encountered difficulties created by his colleagues at work, would be attacked both overtly and covertly, and also that he could not defend himself.

He had said….

Lu Xiuhe couldn’t think about it anymore. He sat up and aggressively opened the most popular comment of one of the antis in the comments section. Then he thought that doing so wouldn’t be quite suitable; if his comment got deleted, wouldn’t all of the words he typed have been in vain?

So instead, he crisply clicked to forward the post.

[Your Great Lord Lu: I’ve been wondering why the mouths of your group of girls are so toxic? Does Zuo Zhen have the final say in the spot where he stands? Why don’t you guys directly tear into the company? If he really was this capable, I would think he would have just gotten the company to directly get your idols kicked out of the group, after which he could finally get get some fucking peace.]

That person replied quickly.

[Idiot, everything I said is based on facts! And you, a big man, even like male idols? Are you disgusting or not ah?]

[Your Great Lord Lu: What facts, send them out ah. If you don’t, you’re my son.]

[Your Great Lord Lu: So what if I’m a man? Why can’t a man like Zuo Zhen? Have even fandoms now become sexist too? Also, I looked at your homepage, it’s all just a pile of anti materials. If you run your mouth off, I’m kindly reminding you that if you forward it more than 500 times, you’ll be charged with defamation. It’s going to be New Year’s Eve soon, leave yourself a way out ba.]

When it came to quarreling, Lu Xiuhe never lost. He sat up in his bed, desperately poking at the screen of his cellphone, and fought with the antis for 300 rounds. After tearing into them for a whole hour, he successfully attracted the attention of Zuo Zhen’s big fans.

Lu Xiuhe failed to manage to react before he was pulled into the Zuo Zhen national fan support group.

[Welcome, welcome!! Introducing everyone, this is Zhenzhen’s male fan, the hero who has torn into X bitch for an hour!]

It took Lu Xiuhe a long time to understand that the X bitch that the other party was referring to was the top commenter on that thread, and was a Zuo Zhen anti who was famous in this fan circle.

[Holy shit, worshipping right now!]

[Is this the fighting power of the legendary male fan?]

[Lulu, how long have you liked Xiao Zhen ah?]

It was too late to say that he wasn’t a fan when he was already in their territory.

Lu Xiuhe braced himself and typed—

[Your Great Lord Lu: ….A few months ba.]

[…… Just a few months?]

[Becoming a die-hard fan just after a few months, this is true love ah! Lulu, don’t worry, stanning our Zhenzhen can’t be wrong!]

Lu Xiuhe was just planning to say something, when the big fan spoke first.

[Lulu, since you have entered the pit of Zhenzhen, you are now a member of the Zuo Family Army. You need to change your avatar and Weibo username. I’ll send you the format, and you can go and change it ba. In the future, if the antis stir up any more trouble, we will inform you in the group.]

Lu Xiuhe’s Weibo was just a wasteland. A few years ago, he would still post some trivial things, but now, he basically didn’t post anything, and it could almost count as being a throwaway account.

So it didn’t matter if he changed his avatar or his username.

Thus, when Zuo Zhen couldn’t fall asleep in the middle of the night and opened Lu Xiuhe’s Weibo, he saw that the other party’s username had abruptly changed—

From “Your Great Lord Lu” to “Zuo Family Army_Your Great Lord Lu”.

Super follower of: Zuo Zhen.

The originally chubby penguin’s head in the display photo had also changed in a flash. Instead, it was now a big-headed, pink-haired chibi character, wearing a red cape on its body that had “Zhen” written on it in big letters.

That night, Lu Xiuhe continued attacking antis even in his dreams.

He had just gotten to the “do you know how hard he works?” part when he heard a harassing telephone ring, which pulled him out of his sleep.

He didn’t even open his eyes as he picked up his cellphone and asked, “…Do you know how hard he works?”

Zuo Zhen: “…”

Zuo Zhen was sitting in a dance studio and sweating profusely right now. He leaned against the floor-length mirror and asked anxiously, “Lu Xiuhe, did you mean to do it?”

Lu Xiuhe was completely muddled and absolutely not clear on what was going on as he said, “What did I mean to do?”

“Did you mean to make sure that I can’t forget about you?” Zuo Zhen’s voice was empty and carried a bit of an echo.

At this, Lu Xiuhe was startled, and then scared awake.

—

The author has something to say:

The characters are not based on anyone! Not on anyone! Not on anyone! The fan circle was just me making up stuff! Made it up! Made it up!

—

Juurensha: ….LXH, you know joining the fanclub of your ex-boyfriend isn’t what someone who doesn’t like him at all would do, right? And I’m pretty sure ZZ went to Manyang just for you, even if he didn’t try anything after trying to sit next to you on the plane.

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