We Don't Talk About Animals Anymore [Dating Show]

Three years after their breakup, top-tier star and singer Tang Xiya and Best Actor Gu Xiangqian are hailed as the "most dignified exes" in the Chinese entertainment industry.

Right. So dignified, they seem never to have been in love.

Until they both announce their participation in a reality dating show streamed live from start to finish, a program touted as an "exes' battlefield": We Don't Talk About Animals Anymore.

The rules are tricky: everyone has to play an animal, and contestants are paired with someone playing the same kind of animal whenever possible.

On the first day of the livestream, the comments went wild:

Tang Xiya picked a cat, and Gu Xiangqian picked one too.

On camera, she smiled and nodded, as polite as if they were meeting for the first time.

He raised an icy eyebrow, greeting her with barbed sarcasm, his face reddening as if they'd run into each other by chance.

The audience squealed over the romance: "Meow, my God! Two cats together, something's definitely going on!"

But on the show:

He made sarcastic, cutting remarks to her.

She treated him with polite distance, refusing to give an inch.

Then one day, an old bracelet on her wrist accidentally snapped.

He stared at it, then lowered his voice to interrogate her in front of millions of viewers:

"Are you still wearing it, or did you get the same one for that... new love of yours?"

Tang Xiya froze. "Who?"

Gu Xiangqian gritted his teeth and laughed bitterly. "The one you left me for, the one who made me an unloved male homewrecker."

The whole internet erupted, and the trending page crashed.

#Gu Xiangqian Male Homewrecker# went viral.

Later, an anonymous conversation between the female contestants during the show's "Secret Cinema" segment revealed the truth buried for years.

There had never been a new love. There had only been the medical records and tears he never saw when she left him decisively while ill.

The livestream camera caught Gu Xiangqian's face turning deathly pale.

That night, right on time, he placed an animal token outside her room,

with an awkward message: "...I've always saved your dried fish for you."

[Bonus scene]

During the show's final vote, Tang Xiya faced the camera, tears in her eyes but a smile on her face:

"My choice is... that silly kitty who thinks he's a male homewrecker."

The livestream was instantly flooded with comments:

"He's panicking! He's panicking! He just jumped out from behind the tree stump!"

"The fastest way to win your wife back: first imagine yourself as a male homewrecker!"

"We're finally talking about animals (meow) again."

Theme: The pull of true love