Chapter 43: Show Premiere (Part 1)

Two days before the premiere of *Idol Producer*, popular contestants were frequently called in by the production team to shoot behind-the-scenes footage, commercial inserts, and interview videos.

Gu Jingyi and Cai Xukun, who generated the highest level of buzz, recorded a dormitory livestream as a warm-up for the show.

The day before *Idol Producer* aired, the production team proactively purchased trending searches on social media to build momentum. The official Weibo account released an extended version of the initial stage promotional trailer, featuring a montage of the contestants' first performances.

The promotional video had a total runtime of three minutes and forty-nine seconds. Excluding the sections introducing the mentors and the competition rules, the trainees' footage took up about ninety seconds, averaging roughly 0.9 seconds per trainee.

This "average" was merely a rough calculation, just as unreliable as a graduating class's employment rate of over eighty percent.

Viewers who clicked on the teaser quickly discovered that, aside from pre-show frontrunners like Gu Jingyi, Cai Xukun, the Yuehua Line, and a few genuine favorites who hogged the screen for a full three seconds, the shots of the other contestants were mostly sweeping panoramic views where their faces were barely recognizable.

As the 3-minute-49-second trailer came to an end, it focused heavily on the ruthless competition rules and the trainees' commentary in the interview rooms regarding the performances on stage. The production team went all out to generate hype for the first episode's premiere the next day, making it evident that iQiyi was brimming with confidence in this variety show.

Particularly for the Yuehua Line and Banana Entertainment trainees, their group dance shots on stage were also compiled into a two-to-three-second montage.

Those scenes of synchronized knife-like choreography possessed an extreme visual impact. Ever since the implementation of the restriction on Korean cultural imports, such uniform and precise group dancing had become a rare sight in China.

For the younger generation influenced by K-pop groups such as TVXQ, Super Junior, Girls' Generation, and EXO, the trainee system was by no means unfamiliar.

When a similar survival show finally appeared domestically, their curiosity was inevitably piqued.

Especially since *Idol Producer* was a web-based reality show whose mentor lineup spanned three distinct fields: idols, vocalists, and rappers.

As the "former runaway center" of *Produce 101 Season 2*, Gu Jingyi came loaded with sensational gimmicks.

Ever since the hit drama *A Love So Beautiful* began airing, he had transitioned seamlessly into *Idol Producer*.

The outside world was speculating that Gu Jingyi's move was a subtle implication that he had faced unfair treatment on *Produce 101* and was forced to withdraw.

In early April 2017, the day after the ranking release for the third elimination ceremony of *Produce 101*, a post Gu Jingyi made on SNS stating, "I am very grateful for the fans' support throughout the recording, but due to personal reasons, I have no choice but to withdraw," was dug up and pushed to the trending searches.

Everyone believed that the decision to force the runaway center Gu Jingyi to quit was controlled by powerful capital.

Gu Jingyi's joining of *Idol Producer* not only attracted casual onlookers but even drew curiosity from K-pop fans who usually never paid attention to domestic entertainment.

On top of that, in October 2017, China's runaway top-tier celebrity publicly announced his relationship on Weibo.

"Let me introduce her to you, this is my girlfriend," a revelation that caused a massive wave of girlfriend fans—who could not accept idols dating—to desert him in droves.

This flock of heartbroken fans whose fandoms had collapsed was actively searching for new idols.

And so, the variety show *Idol Producer* caught the eye of these drifting, displaced Lu Wei sisters.

With twenty-four hours left until the broadcast, as many as seventeen search terms related to *Idol Producer* trended on Weibo.

Perhaps because the pilot episode released today hit the survival show fans' sweet spot, *Idol Producer* became a massive hit even before it aired.

The period from the launch of the theme song music video to the official broadcast of the first full episode would give birth to the very first round of voting results.

In other words, the end of tomorrow's first episode would reveal the compiled vote rankings of the 101 trainees for their very first time. This was also designated as Vote Zero; although it would not eliminate anyone, it would entice many "popular-idol fans" to invest early in the upper-tier contestants.

Based on the experience of "101-style survival shows," each round of voting was non-cumulative. In every cycle, the previous vote pool would be completely cleared to zero.

This clearing of votes was not for the sake of fairness, but rather to better harvest the fans. It was meant to make the fanbases fight as fiercely as possible, ensuring that even the person in first place could never afford to let down their guard.

Prior to the "second elimination ceremony," each iQiyi VIP member was allotted nine votes per day.

For single-minded individual fans, aside from voting for their own beloved idol, they would also trade votes with middle-to-upper-tier contestants who posed no direct threat to their own idol.

As for contestants with previous experience on *Produce 101* like Gu Jingyi, Zhu Zhengting, and Justin, their prominent senior fans had already organized "voting squads" and "comment-control squads" long ago.

Even though the first episode had not yet aired, their fans' daily allocations of nine votes had all been successfully swapped and deployed.

Tian Xiwei meticulously edited Gu Jingyi's two-second appearance from the trailer, frame by frame, and after posting the image set on Weibo, she collapsed into bed and fell fast asleep.

The time finally arrived at the highly anticipated eight o'clock in the evening. Countless viewers were refreshing the iQiyi app right on the dot to watch the long-awaited full episode at the earliest possible moment.

Some viewers entered just a few minutes late, and the moment they clicked on the video, they found the screen densely packed and completely obscured by an overwhelming deluge of bullet comments, making it impossible to even see the video footage clearly.

They had no choice but to adjust the bullet chat settings to display only a quarter of the screen with a transparent anti-blocking filter so it wouldn't ruin their viewing experience.

[Here for Gu Jingyi!]
[Too good to be true, it's Jingyi on stage!]
[Here for Kunkun, cheering for you!]
[Yuehua Seven, let's go!]

The dense barrage of comments intersected and flashed across the screen the moment the video was opened.

"Tap, tap, tap."

A series of rhythmic footsteps echoed against a dim, hazy background. As the face of each uniformed teenage boy appeared, a subtitle indicating his training duration popped up beside him.

"Being a trainee sounds really cool, but if you haven't debuted, you are nothing."

Zhang Yixing's figure appeared as he stood in front of a hundred transparent chairs representing the rankings.

"Being a trainee means endless practice, practice, and more practice."

In the spaces surrounded by those chairs, behind white lettering, teenage boys in uniforms spun and danced without a single moment of rest.

"Being a trainee is having a very cute dream inside a cruel world."

"A dream of wanting to become an idol that I have never given up on."

"Being a trainee is my final desperate gamble."

Behind lines of white text, pain, sweat, tears, and faces brimming with unyielding determination interwove and surfaced.

"Does being a trainee mean anything special to me?"

When Gu Jingyi's figure appeared, the bullet comments suddenly multiplied.

[Ahhhhh, Jingyi!!]
[So handsome, my husband.]
[Going crazy... crazy crazy crazy...]
[So handsome it startled me, so handsome I almost threw my phone away!]

On the screen, Gu Jingyi, being interviewed in the waiting room, wore an ambiguous and clouded expression. After a brief pause, he slowly began to speak:

"There was a time when I was very close to my dream, and then I woke up."

His tone was flat, and unlike the other trainees, he did not bare any resentful expressions while saying those words.

Yet precisely because of that, countless people who understood him were deeply and ruthlessly heartbroken.

[Ahhhhh, don't use little Yi to stab my heart.]
[Is he talking about Ahn Joon-young, right? I can't even bear to watch! He was the runaway center, how could he be manipulated by capital?!]

Finally, Zhang Yixing's face froze on the screen as he stood in the center of the stage. The stage lights shone down, transforming his silhouette from dark to bright.

He picked up the microphone:

"Hello everyone, I am your National Producer Representative—Zhang Yixing."

Zhang Yixing's voiceover was rich and full of emotion:

"The future of the 100 trainees will be reshaped starting from this very moment."

"In the end, nine trainees will stand out from these one hundred, and a brand-new group will be born through the votes of all you producers."

The scene shifted, and Zhang Yixing was surrounded by boys clad in silver-gray uniforms. Their figures also shifted from dark to bright, their young faces glowing with tension and hope under the stage lights.

"Starting today, you in front of the screen will act as national producers, casting your votes for 100 boys. Choose your favorite nine to form China's top-tier idol boy group. The choice of the top nine is placed in your hands."

"National producers—"

Zhang Yixing said.

"Please treat us well!"

One hundred boys shouted in unison.

On stage, Zhang Yixing led the one hundred boys in bowing uniformly to the audience.

It was a ninety-degree bow, folding themselves into a new plane parallel to the stage floor.

At that moment, everyone's expressions were blurred, yet all of them had entrusted their fates to every single viewer watching the show from the front of the stage.